SCARDEC Source Time Functions Database

The downloaded file is an archived file which contains n directories for the n requested earthquakes. Each directory refers to the corresponding earthquake by the name FCTs_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_Name, where YYYY, MM, DD, HH, MM, SS are the year, month, day, hour, minute, second of the NEIC origin time, respectively. Name is the Flinn-Engdahl name of the earthquake location.

Inside each earthquake directory, two files are provided, for the average STF (file fctmoysource_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_Name) and for the optimal STF (file fctoptsource_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_Name)

These two STF files have the same format:

• 1st line: YYYY MM DD HH MM SS'.0' Latitude Longitude [origin time and epicentral location from NEIC]
• 2nd line: Depth(km) M0(N.m) Mw strike1(°) dip1(°) rake1(°) strike2(°) dip2(°) rake2(°) [all from SCARDEC]
• All the other lines are the temporal STF, with format: time(s), moment rate(N.m/s)

Depending on the perspective of the study, the user of the database may also refer to the following articles.

1) Description of the original SCARDEC method:
Vallée, M., J. Charléty, A.M.G. Ferreira, B. Delouis, and J. Vergoz, SCARDEC: a new technique for the rapid determination of seismic moment magnitude, focal mechanism and source time functions for large earthquakes using body wave deconvolution , Geophys. J. Int., 184, 338-358, 2011.

2) First exhaustive use of the STF database for source analyses:
Vallée, M., Source time function properties indicate a strain drop independent of earthquake depth and magnitude , Nature Communications, doi: 10.1038/ncomms3606, 2013.