Question
How do I find the coordinates for stations?
I have a network code (e.g. XE), how can I find coordinates of stations?
Answer
FDSN Station web service
You can get a list of station information from the fdsnws-station service. For example:
http://service.iris.edu/fdsnws/station/1/query?net=XE&format=text&level=sta
Note that this service provides information from only that particular data center — the fedcatalog project can facilitate requests across multiple data centers, or see the Networks page on http://fdsn.org which incorporates this.
IRIS MDA
The IRIS MetaData Aggregator allows the IRIS DMC archive to be browsed by network, station, etc.
For instance:
http://ds.iris.edu/mda/XE
Temporary Networks
Note that XE is a temporary network code, which means it may be reused once a particular deployment has finished (ie. this code is not unique!) For this reason you will generally need to specify a time period in order to get sensible data:
http://service.iris.edu/fdsnws/station/1/query?net=XE&format=text&level=sta&start=2005-01-01&end=2007-12-31
http://ds.iris.edu/mda/XE?timewindow=2005-2007