Earthquake Information Blackout?

originally posted by: dianajune
I don't trust the USGS and I've heard others voice similar concerns. I prefer the EMSC as my source for earthquake data (besides Dutchsinse, realtime tremor maps, etc). However, EMSC at times includes info from USGS.

I don't trust the USGS much when we are talking about earthquakes that happened outside the US. In those cases I look for that country's geological service (almost all countries have one) and look at the data gathered by that local service. From what I have seen there's usually a small difference in magnitude for the Portuguese earthquakes reported by USGS or by the Portuguese institute responsible for geological data in Portugal, the IPMA.

Also, if they are showing data for US earthquakes it's natural that EMSC uses USGS data or data that is common to USGS and the original source. You can see here a list of sources for EMSC data, with some links to those sources, so you can always look at the original source.

I doubt the US military has any influence in foreign countries' geological services, at least for countries that are not under US pseudo-domination.

Looking at the Geoscience Australia website we can see that there were only four earthquakes in the last seven days, all with a magnitude below 3.5, so they do not show on the EMSC's list of 4+ earthquakes.