The following is a list of changes among IAG National
Correspondents.
BUREAU:
BARRIOT, Dr. Jean-Pierre
Assistant Secretary General
CNES/GS18, Avenue Edouard Belin 31401 Toulouse CEDEX 4,
FRANCE
Jean-Pierre.Barriot@cnes.fr
FRANCE:
FLORSCH Nicolas
UMR 7619 "Sisyphe" Case Courrier 105 / T46-56
E3
Département de Géophysique appliquée
75252 Paris Cedex 05, FRANCE
florsch@ccr.jussieu.fr
PHILIPPINES:
LOPEZ Prof. Epifanio D.
Director
Training Center for Applied Geodesy and Photogrammetry, University
of the Philippines, Diliman
Diliman 1101 Quezon
City, PHILIPPINES
epifanio.lpez@up.edu.phlopez@axti.com
NIGERIA:
EZEIGBO Prof. C.U.
Dept. of Surveying and Geoinformatics, University of Lagos, Lagos, NIGERIA
chrisezeigbo@yahoo.com
COLOMBIA:
MARTINEZ, William
Instituto Geografico Agustin Codazzi, Division de
Geodesia, Carrera 30 No. 48-51 Bogota, D.C. COLOMBIA
wamartin@igac.gov.co
TURKEY:
LENK Dr. Col. Eng. Onur
Geodesy Department, General Command of Mapping,
06100 Dikimevi, Ankara, TURKEY
olenk@hgk.mil.tr
AUSTRALIA:
TREGONING Dr. Paul
Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National
University,
Canberra, ACT
0200, AUSTRALIA
pault@rses.anu.edu.au
IAG
Central Bureau
The IERS Annual Report 2003 has been issued as online
publication (PDF files) at http://www.iers.org/iers/publications/reports/2003/. It contains an overview of the IERS, reports of
its components, summaries of meetings and updated contact
addresses. The printed version will be distributed to subscribers
at the beginning of next year.
IERS
Central Bureau
IERS
Global Geophysical Fluids Center (GGFC) in changing
guard
After 7 years of service and at the turn of the 4-year
term for the IERS infrastructure, Ben Chao (of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center) is stepping down from
the position of the Head of IERS' Global Geophysical Fluids
Center (GGFC). The IERS Directing Board approved his
recommendation that a new Head would be selected within GGFC
among the existing Special Bureau (SB) members, effective
January 1, 2005.
A component of IERS, the GGFC has been providing data
services to the Earth sciences community since its establishment
on January 1, 1998. Coordinated by GGFC, eight SBs have become in operation
since then; they are SBs for Atmosphere (David Salstein, Chair),
for Oceans (Richard Gross), for Hydrology (Clark Wilson), for
Tides (Richard Ray), for Mantle (Ben Chao), for Cores (Tim van
Hoolst), for Gravity/Geocenter (Mike Watkins), for Loading (Tonie
van Dam, Hans-Peter Plag, co-Chairs).
After some productive deliberation in GGFC, Tonie van Dam
(of the European Center for Geodynamics
and Seismology, Luxembourg) was appointed unanimously as the new GGFC Head. She
will continue to serve as the co-Chair for the SB for Loading;
while Ben Chao will continue to serve as the Chair of the SB for
Mantle. We would like to commend Tonie for stepping to the plate,
congratulate her, and wish her the best!
Meanwhile, major activities that are underway under GGFC
include:
(1)
New format and interactive web services using XML is being
developed and implemented at Goddard, in parallel and in full
interaction with similar activities in IERS Central Bureau at
BKG, Frankfurt.
(2) A
"renovation" of the data format, documentation, and computing
algorithm is to improve the accuracy of the data products and
service functions now existing at the SBs, especially the SB for
Atmosphere, but certainly including SBs for Oceans and Hydrology.
This activity is supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the
Descartes grant under Veronique Dehant.
(3) A
pilot project is being spearheaded by the SB for Loading to
compute and model the vertical motions at the geodetic stations,
initially for the seasonal mass loading terms. This project has
the goal of contributing to an improvement or a next level of
sophistication in the next implementation of the International
Terrestrial Reference Frame.
IERS
Central Bureau
ICSU and WMO have established a Joint Committee for an
International Polar Year 2007-2008. The official observing
period will be from 1 March 2007
until 1 March
2009. The main geographic focus will be
the Earth's high latitudes, but studies in any region relevant to
the understanding of polar processes or phenomena will be
encouraged. The Joint Committee now seeks information on "IPY
projects that will be proposed by self-organizing groups of
researchers, their parent organization, existing bodies with a
role in polar regions research and monitoring, and consortia of
such bodies."
To this end, expressions of intent are invited to be
received by 14 January 2005
using the format and criteria given in the
website http://www.ipy.org/concept/framework/index.html. Please visit the reference web site for more
information: http://www.ipy.org.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has been involved in
the analysis of Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) observations since
the dawn of this powerful tracking technique. Now, with the help
of recently developed high resolution and exceptional accuracy
gravitational models from NASA's GRACE mission, the precise
determination of the orbital evolution of LAGEOS and LAGEOS 2,
allowed an international team of Code 926 scientists from the
Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (Erricos C. Pavlis,
JCET) and the University of Lecce, Italy (Ignazio Ciufolini), to
use the "Int. Laser Ranging Service--ILRS"-collected data to
verify one of the few remaining tests of Einstein's theory of
general relativity (GR). The particular effect, called
Lense-Thirring effect (L-T), after the two Austrian physicists
who originally predicted it on the basis of Einstein's GR theory,
manifests itself as a precession of the satellite's node on the
equatorial plane, in the same direction as Earth's rotation. The
magnitude of the effect for the LAGEOS-type orbits is about 31
mas per year.
The
effect of a rotating massive body (Earth) on space-time.
(Artwork: F. Ricci, Univ. of Roma, and I. Ciufolini, Univ. of Lecce. Earth model courtesy GFZ-Potsdam, Germany).
The recent test, reported in the journal of Nature
(Ciufolini and Pavlis, 2004), is an update of the result obtained
earlier, and reported in the journal of Science (Ciufolini et
al., 1998). The new result is far more accurate than the first
one, primarily due to the increased accuracy of the gravitational
model used: EIGEN-GRACE02S, (Reigber et al., in press), the
increased data record (eleven versus four years), and the careful
evaluation of the commission and omission errors that are
associated with the new estimated. The new result agrees with the
GR theory to 99% ± 5%. For more details please
visit
http://bowie.gsfc.nasa.gov/926/highlight/Highlight_Sept2004.html.
Source:
bowie.gsfc.nasa.gov
The IGS 2001-2002 Annual and Technical Report series are
available online, please see:
http://igscb.jpl.nasa.gov/overview/pubs.html.
The Annual Report is available in hardcopy and is in the
process of being mailed to all people in the IGS Directory. The
technical reports for 2000 and 2001-2002 will be published in
hardcopy in limited quantities.
At the meeting of the Governing Board on September, it
was agreed to send out the call for a combined 2003-2004 report
series now in order to get back on track with annual
editions.
IGS
Central Bureau
The IVS holds its Directing Board meetings every 6
months. The last meeting was held on October 8, 2004 in
Mahuhari/Japan. It was organized in combination with the
3rd e-VLBI Workshop and a Working Meeting of the IVS
Working Group 3, which is tasked to prepare a report on visions
for VLBI future planning.
IVS provides time series of Earth Orientation
Parameters (EOP)
– a complete set of EOPs twice a week and daily DUT1,
describing the irregularities in Earth rotation – and
parameters which are required for the maintenance of TRF and CRF.
After the implementation of the IVS observing program in 2002,
recommended by the IVS WG2 [http://ivscc.gsfc.nasa.gov], the use
of IVS resources was optimised to its current limits. The
transition from tape- or cassette-data recording system (Mark IV,
K4 and S2) to disk-based recording systems Mark 5 and K5 leads to
improved rapid turn around for product provision, which is of
importance for the EOPs. Mark 5 also increased the throughput at
the correlators. At the 12th board meeting it was
stated that the transition from tape to the new digital recording
system has been made for most of the IVS stations (92%) and is
completed at the correlators.
The new data recording systems Mark 5 and K5 are the
basis for employing data transmission via Internet, realizing
e-VLBI in the near future. e-VLBI tests are successfully ongoing.
The daily 1-hour Intensive observing program for determination of
DUT1 is being set up routinely as e-VLBI. The significant benefit
of e-VLBI is the faster availability of the data at the
correlator and the acceleration of the provision of the final
products.
With some concern it was recognized the some IVS station
has to reduce their observing capacity due to technical problems
and/or due to financial restrictions. Highly appreciated was that
a new station has been established, the Russian Quasar station
Zelenchukskaja operatedby the Institute for Applied Astronomy, St. Petersburg. A new
station in Peru, sponsored by the national Astronomical
Observatory Japan and Metsähovi station in Finland is under consideration.
More new stations are expected to come along in the future e.g.
the Korean VLBI Network (KVN).
As many IVS components were developed some decades ago,
some concern has led to the established of the WG3, which is
tasked to develop ideas for future VLBI systems and to prepare a
“vision 2010” report Such a report should support
and help to coordinate the development of future components for
VLBI. A new generation of VLBI-observing components and new
observation and analysis strategies are required to meet future
service requirements e.g. supporting GGOS. Many components have
been built decades ago and need upgrades or even
replacements.
IVS will strongly support GGOS. The products derived by
the various IVS Analysis Centers were combined internally to
generate the unique IVS VLBI solution. The IVS products were
evaluated and released in SINEX for combination with other
techniques. The routine products
are extended to include the troposphere
parameters zenith path delays which are calculated from all IVS
rapid turn around observing session (IVS R1 and R4). The results
are comparable to the IGS results in accuracy.
It has to be mentioned that a mid term election is
ongoing. The terms of the representatives for the Technology
Development Centers and for the
Analysis and Data Centers and three At Large Positions expire. An election
committee was established for the voting procedure.
During the meeting an earthquake occurred of
magnitude 5.8, approximately 20 km away from the meeting location
and a typhoon rapidly moved towards Tokyo (Mahuhari), arriving on
Saturday afternoon. Most of the board member were not faced with
these kinds of events, but felt high respect for those natural
events.
Wolfgang
Schlüter
Nancy
Vandenberg
Dynamic Planet
2005
"Monitoring and Understanding a
Dynamic Planet with Geodetic and Oceanographic
Tools"
A Joint Assembly of the IAG,
IAPSO and IABO
22 - 26 August
2005Cairns, Australia
Scientists from all countries are invited to participate
in this unique conference – a joint assembly of the
International Association of Geodesy (IAG), International
Association for Physical Sciences of the Oceans (IAPSO), and the
International Association for Biological Oceanography (IBO).
Under the program theme "Monitoring and Understanding a Dynamic
Planet with Geodetic and Oceanographic Tools", the emphasis will
be on the interaction of the earth and oceanographic sciences, as
well as providing an opportunity to hear the latest research in
the disciplines of geodesy and oceanography. The location for
2005 will be Cairns, Australia - A vibrant city, fringed by the world famous
Great Barrier Reefand Coastal Rainforest. No other city in the world lies
next to two World Heritage Listed sites - offering the perfect
setting for Dynamic Planet 2005. Registrations and Call for
Papers are now open! For further information, please visit the
Dynamic Planet website
http://www.dynamicplanet2005.com.
Melissa
Crowle
Event
Coordinator
IAG Sponsored Meetings
6-8 December
2004, Sydney, Australia
Internet: www.gnss2004.org.
IAG-IASPEI Joint Capacity Building
Workshop
17-23 January
2005, Miramare-Trieste, Italy
The Abdus Salam
International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), will
organize a Workshop on Deformation Measurements and Understanding
Natural Hazards in Developing Countries. The Workshop will be
co-sponsored by IAG, IASPEI and IUGG. Please visit http://agenda.ictp.trieste.it/smr.php?1642
for more information.
International IGeS Geoid School
31 January-
5 February 2005, Budapest,
Hungary
The next International IGeS
School on "The
Determination and Use of the Geoid" will be at Budapest, Hungary. The preliminary
program and related information is available at http://www.iag-aig.org.
17-19 March, 2005,
Jaén (Spain)
The International
Symposium on Geodetic Deformation Monitoring: From Geophysical to
Geodetic Roles will be held at the University of Jaén (Spain) from 17th to
19th March 2005. The
Symposium will be hosted by the Geodesy Research Group of
the University of Jaén. For more information please visit the workshop web
site at http://www.ujaen.es/huesped/gdeforma/.
1-4 March 2005,
Lanzarote, Canary
Islands, Spain
The International
Workshop on “Deformation and Gravity Change: Indicators of
Isostasy, Tectonics, Volcanism and Climate Change” will be
held at Casa de los Volcanes (a scientific and cultural meeting
place) on Lanzarote, Canary
Islands, Spain. Organizers are
José Fernández (jose_fernandez@mat.ucm.es)
and Detlef Wolf (dasca@gfz-potsdam.de).
"Monitoring and
Understanding a Dynamic Planet with Geodetic and Oceanographic
Tools"
A Joint Assembly of
the IAG, IAPSO and IABO
22
- 26
August 2005,
Cairns
,
Australia
Scientists from all countries are
invited to participate in this unique conference – a joint
assembly of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG),
International Association for Physical Sciences of the Oceans
(IAPSO), and the International Association for Biological
Oceanography (IBO). For further
information, please visit the Dynamic Planet website http://www.dynamicplanet2005.com.
IAG Sister Societies’ General
Assemblies
9-16 July 2005, A
Coruña, Spain
The XXII International
Cartographic Conference (ICC) is the most important event in the
International Cartographic Association (ICA) calendar. Please
visit http://www.icc2005.org for
details.
