World Stress Map Database Release 2025

The World Stress Map (WSM) is a global compilation of information on the crustal present-day stress field. It is a collaborative project between academia and industry that aims to characterize the stress pattern and to understand the stress sources. It commenced in 1986 as a project of the International Lithosphere Program under the leadership of Mary-Lou Zoback. From 1995-2008 it was a project of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities headed first by Karl Fuchs and then by Friedemann Wenzel. Since 2009 the WSM is maintained at the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences.

The WSM database release 2025 contains 100,842 data records within the Earth’s crust. The data are provided in two formats: Excel-file (wsm2025.xlsx) and comma separated fields (wsm2025.csv). Data records with reliable A-C quality are displayed in the World Stress Map (doi:10.5880/WSM.2025.002). Further detailed information on the WSM quality ranking scheme 2025, guidelines for the analysis of borehole logging data, and software for stress map generation and the stress pattern analysis is available at www.world-stress-map.org. The database structure and content is explained in the WSM Technical Report TR 25-01 (https://doi.org/10.48440/wsm.2025.001).