Line layer · Environmental
Quaternary fault line map for the western US
Quaternary faults — the geology your structural engineer will ask about.
A fault line map does not disqualify a site; it prices one. Proximity to a quaternary fault drives seismic design category, structural cost and insurability, and all three are easier to accept early than to discover during design.
- Source
- USGS
- Refresh
- Monthly
- Geometry
- Line
- Included from
- Complete ($499/mo)
Why Fault Lines matters
Seismic design category is a cost multiplier applied to the entire structure, not a line item. For a facility with heavy floor loading and uninterruptible operations, moving a site twenty miles can change the structural budget more than any concession a county will offer.
Questions Fault Lines answers
- How close is the nearest mapped active fault?
- What seismic design category should I expect at this location?
- Does fault proximity make this site materially more expensive to build on?
What is in the Fault Lines data
Coverage: Mapped quaternary faults across the western US. Source dataset: Quaternary fault and fold database.
| Field | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Fault name | Named structure as published. |
| Slip rate class | Published activity class, which governs how the fault is treated in design. |
| Age of most recent movement | The quaternary timing bracket for the last known rupture. |
How we serve Fault Lines
Fault traces are served as line geometry from the USGS databases, with upstream failures caught and returned as an empty collection so an intermittent government endpoint never takes the map down.
Fault line map — source, refresh and coverage
- Steward
- USGS
- Dataset
- Quaternary fault and fold database
- Refresh cadence
- Monthly
- Coverage
- Mapped quaternary faults across the western US
- Records
- 10,210 rows
- Geometry
- Line
- Included from
- Complete ($499/mo/mo)
Who uses Fault Lines
Data Centers & AI Infrastructure
Power, water, fiber and permitting risk for every candidate site — before you send anyone to look at it.
Industrial & Manufacturing Siting
The same constraint stack as a data center, weighted for process load instead of compute.
Energy Development
Route corridors, site generation, and clear the environmental picture before the first landowner call.
Mining & Exploration
Deposits, active claims, protected land and the water to run a mine — on one map.
Read Fault Lines alongside
Seismic Activity
Recent earthquake epicenters, sized by magnitude.
Protected Areas
PAD-US conserved lands by GAP status — what is off the table, and what only looks like it.
Mine Locations
USGS MRDS mines and deposits, filterable by commodity.
Site Score Grid
Every layer above, resolved to one scored hex you can rank and defend.
Terms used on this page
See Fault Lines on the map
This layer is included from Complete ($499/mo) upward, alongside every other layer in the Complete coverage.