Legal Notice and Disclaimer

By accessing or using Solast.io, you acknowledge that you have read this Legal Notice and Disclaimer. If you do not accept these terms, do not use the website or rely on its materials.

1. Nature and Purpose of the Project

1.1 Educational and artistic character

Solast.io is an independent educational, artistic, and popular-science project created by the author of the project (curator@solast.io). It presents landscape, geology, tectonic, and natural-heritage themes for public learning, visual exploration, and cultural interest.

1.2 No professional or official service

Solast.io is not a government service, public authority, regulated warning system, scientific institution, emergency platform, professional geospatial service, legal service, engineering service, insurance service, or official decision-support system.

1.3 Independent project materials

Unless expressly stated otherwise, the website's texts, summaries, classifications, visual effects, explanatory cards, rankings, scores, design choices, and interpretive materials are independent project-authored materials created for general educational and artistic presentation.

2. No Professional, Official, Emergency, or Safety Use

2.1 No reliance for decisions

Solast.io and all materials made available through it are provided for general informational, educational, artistic, and popular-science purposes only. They must not be relied on as professional advice, official guidance, or authoritative source material for any specific decision or action.

2.2 Prohibited reliance contexts

Without limitation, Solast.io must not be used as a basis for or substitute for:

• emergency response or public warning;
• earthquake, tsunami, volcanic, tectonic, weather, climate, or other hazard monitoring;
• alerts, watches, advisories, forecasts, hazard assessments, damage estimates, evacuation instructions, or official impact assessments;
• navigation, routing, cartography, topography, surveying, geodesy, cadastral activity, or any location-critical use;
• engineering, construction, infrastructure, land-use, planning, permitting, environmental compliance, or safety analysis;
• insurance, financial, legal, regulatory, governmental, or operational decision-making;
• scientific validation, quantitative research conclusions, or any task requiring authoritative source data, complete metadata, or specialist review.

2.3 No emergency use

Do not use Solast.io in an emergency or potential emergency. If you need authoritative information, warnings, instructions, or situational awareness, consult official government agencies, emergency services, tsunami warning centers, geological surveys, volcano observatories, meteorological authorities, mapping authorities, civil-protection authorities, and primary source providers directly.

3. 3D Terrain Models and Landscape Visualizations

3.1 Artistic and educational visualization only

The 3D terrain models, landscape scenes, relief renderings, and related visual materials displayed on Solast.io are artistic and educational visualizations. They are intended to help users explore and discuss landscapes and Earth processes in a general way.

3.2 Not maps or practical spatial products

These materials are not cartographic products, topographic maps, navigation aids, geodetic products, engineering models, surveying outputs, or practical spatial datasets. They are not suitable for route planning, field navigation, boundary determination, measurement, site selection, hazard analysis, construction, infrastructure work, or any other practical or safety-critical use.

3.3 Terrain-processing tools and source uncertainty

Some terrain-related materials may be generated with the assistance of third-party terrain-processing tools and publicly available or open terrain or elevation data services. The exact upstream sources, coverage, resolution, preprocessing history, and applicable license terms may vary by workflow, time, location, and service configuration.

Where a specific upstream source can be identified with reasonable confidence, Solast.io intends to provide the applicable attribution and license notice. Where a specific upstream source cannot be verified, no statement on this website should be read as a representation that any particular named upstream dataset or provider was definitively used for a given model.

3.4 No representation of survey-grade accuracy

Relief, elevation, slope, coastline, shoreline, or landform appearance may be stylized, generalized, resampled, filtered, merged, cropped, normalized, exaggerated, smoothed, denoised, colorized, or otherwise transformed. Apparent shapes, heights, boundaries, alignments, and relationships may differ from official or source datasets.

4. Earth Pulse: Recent Earthquake Data and Seismic Visualizations

4.1 Source and transformation

The Earth Pulse layer uses recent earthquake event data obtained from the U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program real-time GeoJSON feeds, including the USGS M4.5+ past-day GeoJSON summary feed (https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/feed/v1.0/summary/4.5_day.geojson) and related USGS event-page materials. Solast.io may normalize, cache, limit, filter, rank, cluster, summarize, and visually reinterpret those data for presentation on the website. Solast.io may cache and refresh those data less frequently than the upstream USGS feed.

4.2 Solast.io's own interpretation

Marker size, brightness, pulsing, radar reactions, clustering behavior, inspector text, event prioritization, and any project-defined scoring or ranking logic, including any salience or importance score, are Solast.io's own visual and editorial interpretations. They do not represent official USGS judgments, prioritization, scientific conclusions, or public-safety determinations.

4.3 No warning, alerting, or monitoring function

Earth Pulse is not a warning, alerting, forecasting, hazard-analysis, emergency-management, monitoring, scientific-analysis, safety, insurance, engineering, legal, or operational tool. It does not issue warnings, advisories, watches, forecasts, estimated impacts, or evacuation instructions.

4.4 Tsunami field notice

Any tsunami-related field shown on Solast.io is displayed only as source metadata. It is not a tsunami warning, watch, advisory, forecast, evacuation instruction, or official impact determination. The presence, absence, or value of such a field must not be interpreted as meaning that a tsunami has occurred, will occur, or is expected.

4.5 Delays, revisions, omissions, and status

Recent earthquake information may be delayed, incomplete, revised, superseded, withdrawn, reclassified, duplicated, omitted, or unavailable. Events may initially appear with automatic or preliminary characteristics and later be reviewed, corrected, or removed. Solast.io may also display only a subset of available source events and may omit events because of filtering, caching, ranking, technical limitations, or design choices.

5. Tectonic Plates: Plate Geometry and Educational Content

5.1 Source geometry

The tectonic plate geometry shown on Solast.io includes material based on the PB2002 world tectonic plates and boundaries dataset associated with Peter Bird's plate-boundary model and redistributed in GeoJSON and related formats by third-party maintainers.

5.2 License and source notice

The geometry source identified for Solast.io's tectonic-plates runtime data is associated with the fraxen/tectonicplates redistribution and is stated there to be made available under the Open Data Commons Attribution License 1.0. Solast.io intends to respect that notice and related source-credit requirements.

5.3 Solast.io-authored educational text

Any explanatory cards, simplified descriptions, motion summaries, neighboring-plate notes, confidence labels, status labels, plain-English explanations, or other educational text presented alongside plate geometry are Solast.io-authored interpretations and simplifications. They are not official statements by Peter Bird, Hugo Ahlenius, Nordpil, csterling, fraxen, Open Data Commons, or any scientific institution.

5.4 Model dependence and approximation

Plate geometry, classifications, approximate motion descriptions, boundary interpretations, and educational summaries may be simplified, approximate, model-dependent, incomplete, disputed, or interpreted differently by different researchers and institutions. Solast.io does not claim that any plate-related representation on the site is uniquely correct, complete, current, or authoritative.

6. Data Sources, Attribution, and Third-Party Rights

6.1 General principle

Third-party data, services, names, marks, and source materials remain subject to their own applicable laws, licenses, permissions, notices, and rights. Solast.io does not claim ownership of third-party materials merely because they are displayed, transformed, summarized, or referenced on the website.

6.2 Earth Pulse source notice

Earth Pulse incorporates earthquake-source information from the U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program real-time GeoJSON feeds, including the USGS M4.5+ past-day GeoJSON summary feed (https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/feed/v1.0/summary/4.5_day.geojson) and related earthquake-feed or event-page materials. Solast.io acknowledges the U.S. Geological Survey as the source of those source data where applicable. Credit: U.S. Geological Survey.

6.3 Tectonic plates source notice

The tectonic-plates layer includes material identified as PB2002 World tectonic plates and boundaries, associated with Peter Bird, with redistribution or conversion credits identified by the relevant dataset metadata as including Hugo Ahlenius / Nordpil, csterling, and the fraxen/tectonicplates repository. Solast.io identifies that material as subject to the Open Data Commons Attribution License 1.0 to the extent stated by the relevant upstream redistribution.

For public-facing output and database-related materials derived from that source, Solast.io gives notice that they contain or are based on information made available under the Open Data Commons Attribution License 1.0 (https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/1-0/). The upstream redistribution is available at https://github.com/fraxen/tectonicplates.

6.4 Terrain-source notice

Terrain-related materials may include the use of third-party terrain-processing tools and publicly available or open terrain or elevation data services. The exact upstream source or combination of sources used for a given terrain-related work may not always be identifiable from the displayed output alone.

If Solast.io later verifies that a specific upstream terrain service or dataset was used for particular material, Solast.io may update these notices to include the applicable source credits and license statements for that verified source.

6.5 No override of third-party licenses

Nothing in this Notice is intended to reduce, replace, or override rights that may be granted to users under an applicable third-party license. If a third-party license applies to specific material, that license governs that material to the extent of any conflict.

7. Independent Interpretation; No Affiliation or Endorsement

7.1 Independent project

Solast.io is an independent project. Unless expressly and specifically stated otherwise after verification, Solast.io is not affiliated with, sponsored by, endorsed by, approved by, verified by, acting on behalf of, or officially connected with any data provider, software provider, publisher, maintainer, researcher, institution, or public authority.

7.2 Named parties

Without limitation, this includes USGS, NASA, METI, Mapzen, Nextzen, Peter Bird, Hugo Ahlenius, Nordpil, csterling, fraxen, Open Data Commons, TerreSculptor, and any other upstream source, maintainer, repository, contractor, agency, or service provider that may be referenced on the website.

7.3 References do not imply endorsement

References, links, names, credits, notices, and acknowledgments are provided for source identification, license compliance, transparency, and user information only. They do not imply endorsement, review, certification, warranty, suitability, or approval of Solast.io or of any Solast.io-authored interpretation, visualization, summary, ranking, or opinion.

8. Accuracy, Availability, Delay, and Scientific Uncertainty

8.1 No warranty of accuracy or completeness

Solast.io is provided "as is" and "as available." To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the author of the project makes no representation or warranty, express or implied, regarding accuracy, completeness, reliability, timeliness, availability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, or error-free operation. Materials are prepared and presented in good faith, but may contain factual, interpretive, typographical, technical, or other errors or omissions and may not always reflect the most current available information.

8.2 Data and model uncertainty

Scientific datasets and models may be incomplete, approximate, uncertain, provisional, simplified, interpolated, disputed, outdated, or revised after publication. Different providers and researchers may classify the same region, boundary, process, or event differently.

8.3 Technical and presentation limitations

Data shown on Solast.io may be delayed, stale, cached, unavailable, rate-limited, reformatted, normalized, simplified, truncated, filtered, merged, clipped, rounded, reprojected, mis-synced, or incorrectly displayed because of software errors, data-provider changes, connectivity issues, browser limitations, third-party outages, or human error.

8.4 No guarantee of continuity

Any feature, layer, dataset, source connection, explanatory text, visual treatment, score, ranking method, or page content may be changed, suspended, restricted, or removed at any time without notice.

9. User Responsibility and Official Sources

9.1 User assumes all risk

You assume all risk arising from access to, use of, non-use of, interpretation of, or reliance on Solast.io and its materials.

9.2 Duty to verify with authoritative sources

Before making any practical, professional, scientific, legal, financial, safety-related, or emergency-related decision, you must consult authoritative primary sources and, where appropriate, qualified professionals and competent authorities.

9.3 Official-source priority

For authoritative information, users should consult, as relevant, official government agencies, emergency services, civil-protection authorities, tsunami warning centers, geological surveys, volcano observatories, meteorological agencies, mapping and cadastral authorities, scientific institutions, peer-reviewed literature, and the primary source provider for the relevant dataset.

10. Intellectual Property and Restrictions

10.1 Solast.io-authored materials

Unless otherwise stated, the Solast.io name, website design, layout, selection and arrangement of project-authored materials, original text, educational explanations, editorial summaries, visual styling, software code, graphics, icons, animations, audio-visual presentation, and project-authored 3D or derived artistic assets belong to the author of the project or are used with permission.

10.2 Third-party materials

Third-party data, datasets, licenses, marks, names, and other protected materials remain the property of their respective owners or rightsholders and remain subject to their own applicable license terms and legal restrictions.

10.3 Restrictions on extraction and re-use of Solast.io-authored materials

Except where expressly permitted by mandatory law or by an applicable license, you may not:

• copy, mirror, republish, commercially exploit, or redistribute substantial Solast.io-authored materials;
• extract, scrape, bulk-download, reconstruct, reverse engineer, decompile, or derive reusable protected 3D meshes, terrain assets, scene data, textures, or source assets from website output;
• remove or obscure any source notice, attribution, rights notice, trademark notice, or license notice;
• use Solast.io branding, trade dress, or project-authored materials in a way that implies affiliation or endorsement;
• use Solast.io-authored materials to train, fine-tune, evaluate, ground, or otherwise develop machine-learning or artificial-intelligence systems, datasets, models, or embeddings.

10.4 Limits of these restrictions

The restrictions in this Section apply only to rights controlled by the author of the project. They do not revoke or narrow any rights that may be granted to you by mandatory law or by an applicable third-party license for third-party materials.

11. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the author of the project shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, exemplary, punitive, special, or other loss or damage of any kind arising out of or relating to Solast.io, including any loss arising from reliance on information, scientific interpretation, visualization, omission, delay, interruption, inaccuracy, data-source change, third-party action, software malfunction, or inability to access the website.

This limitation applies whether the claim is brought in contract, tort, negligence, strict liability, statutory cause of action, or any other legal theory, and even if the possibility of damage was foreseeable.

12. Changes to Materials and This Notice

Solast.io may update the website, its features, its data sources, its attribution notices, and this Legal Notice and Disclaimer at any time without prior notice. The version made available on the website is the version that applies at the time of use.

13. Final Provisions

13.1 Severability

If any provision of this Notice is held to be unlawful, invalid, or unenforceable, the remaining provisions shall remain in effect to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law.

13.2 No waiver

Failure to enforce any provision of this Notice shall not constitute a waiver of that provision or of any other provision.

13.3 Interpretive priority

This Notice must be interpreted conservatively in favor of avoiding false impressions of precision, authority, endorsement, safety, or official status.