The DGS maintains its own network of seismometers to detect local earthquake activity. Following an earthquake swarm in 1972, the DGS established its first seismometer station in Newark. The network now consists of five seismic stations spread across the state: three stations in the Newark-Wilmington area, one at the DEMA office in southern New Castle County, and one at the Sussex County Emergency Operations Center.

Bellevue State Park (BVD) seismic network station. The seismometer located at Bellevue State Park is placed on the Brandywine Blue Gneiss. The Brandywine Blue Gneiss is the new name given to the granulite-facies felsic gneisses in the Wilmington Complex. Informally called the “blue rocks,” this unit is a medium- to coarse-grained, lineated (pinstriped), two-pyroxene gneiss with variable quartz content and thin, discontinuous mafic layers, pods, and schlieren. The pinstriping and the massive nature of the rock suggest the rock is intrusive; however, deformation and recrystallization have obscured original igneous features.