SeisCat Changelog

Keep a local seismic catalog.

   /\_/\
~~( ⊙.⊙ )~~ SeisCat

0.9.4 - 2026-04-23

Added

New station_codes configuration parameter for filtering stations by name when downloading waveforms (analogous to channel_codes). Supports multiple codes and wildcard patterns (?, *).
New picked_stations_only configuration parameter to restrict waveform downloads to stations that have at least one P or S-wave arrival in the catalog (requires a QuakeML event details file to be present).
seiscat self status now reports installation status of optional plotting modules (cartopy, plotly, pandas, folium).

Fixed

Fixed seiscat self update --git to install optional plotting/data dependencies (cartopy, plotly, folium) together with SeisCat.

0.9.3 - 2026-04-20

Fixed

Fix capitalization of SeisCat in small logo 😳
Fix seiscat self update logic to properly handle up-to date versions

0.9.2 - 2026-04-20

Added

New installer script to install SeisCat as a uv-managed system tool on Linux, macOS, and Windows (PowerShell).
New seiscat self workflows for self-management, including updates (seiscat self update, seiscat self update --git) and shell completion setup (seiscat self completion install).
New ascii-art small logo 🐱

0.9.1 - 2026-04-17

Added

New config options fdsn_event_user and fdsn_event_password to specify authentication credentials for the FDSN event web service (fdsn_event_url).
New config options fdsn_providers_users and fdsn_providers_passwords (parallel lists) to specify per-provider authentication credentials for waveform/metadata providers (fdsn_providers).
New config option keep_raw_evid (default: False). When True, the full original resource_id string is stored in an additional protected column raw_evid alongside the normalized evid. This is useful when the normalized evid is not recognized by the FDSN server and the original resource_id is needed to download event details.
seiscat fetchdata: when downloading event details fails with the normalized evid, automatically retry using the raw_evid value (if the raw_evid column is present in the database).
New --max-col-width option for seiscat print to limit the width of columns in the interactive table pager. Longer values are truncated with ..., while full row details remain available via the Enter popup.
seiscat print interactive event sorting popup:
- option to restore the default sort order by pressing 0
- it’s now possible to dismiss the event sorting popup by pressing esc or q.

Fixed

Fixed pager sorting failing when a column contains None values mixed with numeric values (e.g. magnitude columns with positive and negative values).
Fixed seiscat plot -b cartopy crashing with IndexError when the map extent is very small (e.g. near-coincident events), by falling back to the simple background when Natural Earth imagery cannot be rendered.
Fixed clipboard copying of evid not working on linux.

0.9 - 2026-04-15

This is a major release with substantial improvements across visualization, database management, and workflow automation. Highlights include a new interactive terminal UI, expanded plotting capabilities with Plotly, and four new core commands: seiscat timeline, seiscat export, seiscat cropdb, and seiscat run. Additional enhancements throughout the CLI make filtering, import/export, and event processing more powerful and flexible.

Minimum required Python version is now 3.9, and support for Python 3.13 and 3.14 has been added.

See the full changelog below for complete details.

Added

Compatibility

Added support for Python 3.13 and 3.14.

CLI and User Interface

Added colored help output using rich-argparse.
Added colorized error messages for improved visibility and consistency.
Added interactive table pager for seiscat print -f table with:
- fixed header
- alternating row colors
- row selection
- sorting
- copying evid
- keyboard navigation
- event details popup
Added new seiscat logo command to print the ASCII-art SeisCat logo.

Filtering and Sorting

Added new --where-help option to display detailed help for the --where filter expression, including syntax, examples, and notes. Available from any subcommand supporting --where (editdb, print, export, plot, fetchdata, run).
Added new --sortby option to sort catalog output by any database field (default: time). Available for:
- seiscat print
- seiscat export
- seiscat plot
- seiscat run
Added tab-completion support for --sortby field names.

Plotting and Visualization

Added new seiscat timeline command with:
- matplotlib / plotly / terminal backends
- attribute or count mode (--count, --bins)
- optional --colorby
- time-formatted axis/colorbar when using time
Added --colorby support for map plots.
Added --colormap support (with autocompletion) for:
- seiscat plot
- seiscat timeline
Added new --threshold option for seiscat plot (Cartopy + --colorby only): markers above threshold retain a black outline.
Added new plotly plottype for seiscat plot, enabling interactive 3D seismicity plots.
Added new --out-file option for seiscat plot to save plots to file.

Data Import and Export

Added --fromfile option to seiscat initdb and seiscat updatedb to initialize/update the database from an event file. Supported formats:
- CSV
- Any ObsPy-supported format (QuakeML, SC3ML, NLLOC, etc.)
Added -C, --crop option for file-based imports in seiscat initdb and seiscat updatedb to crop imported events according to configured selection criteria.
Added new CSV import option -x, --missing-value in seiscat initdb and seiscat updatedb to define missing-value markers (e.g. -999, N/A).
Added new --csv-extra-columns option to seiscat initdb for importing non-standard CSV columns as additional database fields.
Added new seiscat export command to export catalogs in:
- CSV
- GeoJSON
- KML

Database Management

Added new seiscat cropdb command to crop an existing database to configured selection criteria.
Added seiscat editdb options to:
- add table columns
- delete table columns
- rename table columns
Added protection for default columns against rename/delete.
Added new seiscat get and seiscat set commands to retrieve/set specific event attribute values.

Automation and Scripting

Added new seiscat run command to run a user-defined command on each event.
Added new seiscat samplescript command to generate a sample script for seiscat run.

Data Retrieval

Added new --sds option for seiscat fetchdata to retrieve waveform data from a local SDS archive.

Configuration

Added new configuration option prefer_high_sampling_rate.
Added new configuration option station_radius_max_mag for magnitude-dependent maximum station radius.

Changed

Raised minimum required Python version to 3.9.
Changed default database filename from seiscat.sqlite to seiscat_db.sqlite.
Improved error messages for --where to suggest using --where-help.
Improved --where handling of missing values:
- mag=None
- mag==None
- mag!=None are now translated into SQL IS NULL / IS NOT NULL.
Renamed -m/--maptype to -b/--backend in seiscat plot for consistency with seiscat timeline.
Renamed seiscat download to seiscat fetchdata.
Replaced configuration option channel_priorities with channel_codes.
seiscat plot now respects --sortby instead of always sorting by time, allowing control over draw order.
Upgraded Cartopy maps to use higher-resolution Natural Earth background images.
seiscat editdb now requires repeating --set and --increment for each KEY=VALUE pair. Example: -s locked=True -s processed=True.

Removed

Removed configuration option location_priorities.
Removed CSV output format from seiscat print; use seiscat export instead.

Fixed

Fixed an issue in seiscat editdb where positional arguments (eventid, event_version) were not parsed correctly due to improper handling of --set and --increment.

0.8 - 2024-10-28

New option for seiscat print and seiscat plot: --where to filter events based on one or more conditions
New option for seiscat plot: --maptype to use either cartopy (Matplotlib) or folium (HTML) for plotting maps
New command line option seiscat download to download full event details and/or waveform data and metadata from FDSNWS services

0.7 - 2024-03-11

CSV output for seiscat print, using --format=csv (or -f csv)
Special argument ALL for seiscat editdb to edit all the events (or all the events of a given version when used together with the --version argument)
New option for seiscat editdb: --increment to increment (or decrement) a numeric field by a given, positive or negative, amount

0.6 - 2023-06-26

New command to edit the event database: seiscat editdb
eventid argument for seiscat print, to print a specific event
Fix bug where an event was updated when extra fields were set to a different value than the default
Fix bug where an event was updated to new version even if the same event already existed in the database

0.5 - 2023-06-22

New configuration option: overwrite_updated_events. Default is False and updated events get an incremented version number
--allversions option for seiscat print and seiscat plot to print/show all the versions for events with more than one version
--format option for seiscat print: current possibilities are table (default) and stats
--reverse option for seiscat print: if set, latest events will be printed on top
Rename database column dep to depth

0.4 - 2023-06-20

Command line autocompletion, thanks to argcomplete
Show event depth in plot annotation
--scale option for seiscat plot
Correctly parse evids from USGS and ISC
Exit gracefully if database file is missing
Fix printing of None values

0.3 - 2023-06-20

New command to print catalog to screen: seiscat print
Documentation!

0.2 - 2023-06-19

Fix for plotting the whole world when no limits are given
New way of computing zoom level for map tiles

0.1 - 2023-06-19

This is the initial release of SeisCat.

SeisCat is a command line tool to keep a local seismic catalog. The local catalog can be used as a basis for further analyses.

The seismic catalog is built and updated by querying a FDSNWS event webservice. More ways of feeding the catalog will be added in the future.

The local catalog is stored in a SQLite database (single file database).