Geodetic Observations for Earth System

Dear Colleagues,

In recent decades, there has been a sharp rise in the quality and quantity of geodetic data from a variety of terrestrial, aerial, and spatial sources covering displacement and gravity. The development of space geodetic techniques has played a key role in this advance in geodesy and led to a boom in the spatial and temporal coverage and in the number of applications, while permitting the observation of terrestrial areas that are remote and hard to access using more classical ground-based methods. This has made it possible—for example—to detect deformations and variations in gravity associated with large earthquakes, or volcanoes that have not yet been studied systematically, and to monitor other natural or anthropogenic hazards. These include both those that progress slowly, such as droughts and subsidence caused by water extraction or subsoil exploitation, and those that occur suddenly, as is the case of tsunamis, which have inspired the design and deployment of complex early detection systems and warning systems. These advances have also been applied in other fields, particularly engineering, to allow more accurate measurement when executing and subsequently monitoring large-scale engineering projects, making it easier to keep track of deformations and detect pathologies in infrastructures and constructions. All these new capabilities highlight a clear need for new approaches to analysis, modeling, and interpretation. The quantitative combination of geodetic data with non-geodetic observations (e.g., seismicity, gas emissions, atmospheric measurements) using these new approaches is especially important. The abundant availability of data from a variety of sources also enables studies to be conducted on a very local scale (only a few hundred square meters), on a regional scale, and even on a global scale. This reinforces the importance of aspects such as the combination or merger of terrestrial, aerial, and spatial data; the materialization of the reference system with the progress of the global geodetic reference frame for sustainable development (which will include the international height frame, defined through the potential of the Earth gravity field); and the prediction and precise determination of the orbits of observation satellites, all of which depend closely on terrestrial reference frames and their orientation in space. This Special Issue will consider all these aspects.

Prof. Dr. José Fernández
Prof. Dr. José M. Ferrándiz
Prof. Dr. Juan F. Prieto
Mr. Joaquín Escayo
Guest Editors

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