Geodesy is the science of accurately measuring and understanding three fundamental properties of Earth: its geometric shape, its orientation in space, and its gravity field, as well as the changes of these properties with time. Over the past half century, the United States, in cooperation with international partners, has led the development of geodetic techniques and instrumentation. Geodetic observing systems provide a significant benefit to society in a wide array of military, research, civil, and commercial areas, including sea level change monitoring, autonomous navigation, tighter low flying routes for strategic aircraft, precision agriculture, civil surveying, earthquake monitoring, forest structural mapping and biomass estimation, and improved floodplain mapping. Recognizing the growing reliance of a wide range of scientific and societal endeavors on infrastructure for precise geodesy, and recognizing geodetic infrastructure as a shared national resource, this book provides an independent assessment of the benefits provided by geodetic observations and networks, as well as a plan for the future development and support of the infrastructure needed to meet the demand for increasingly greater precision. Precise Geodetic Infrastructure makes a series of focused recommendations for upgrading and improving specific elements of the infrastructure, for enhancing the role of the United States in international geodetic services, for evaluating the requirements for a geodetic workforce for the coming decades, and for providing national coordination and advocacy for the various agencies and organizations that contribute to the geodetic infrastructure.

Geodetic reference frames are the basis for The programme of the Symposium was divided three-dimensional, time dependent positioning according to the Sub-commissions, Projects in all global, regional and national networks, in and Study Groups of Commission 1 into eight cadastre, engineering, precise navigation, geo- general themes: information systems, geodynamics, sea level studies, and other geosciences. They are 1. Combination of space techniques necessary to consistently estimate unknown 2. Global reference frames and Earth rotation parameters using geodetic observations, e. g. , 3. Regional reference frames station coordinates, Earth orientation and 4. Interaction of terrestrial and celestial frames rotation parameters. Commission 1 “Reference 5. Vertical reference frames Frames” of the International Association of 6. Ionosphere modelling and analysis Geodesy (IAG) was established within the new 7. Satellite altimetry structure of IAG in 2003 with the mission to 8. Use of GNSS for reference frames study the fundamental scientific problems for the establishment of reference frames. One day of the Symposium was dedicated to a The principal objective of the scientific work joint meeting with the International Congress of the Commission is basic research on: of Federación Internationale des Géomètres - Definition, establishment, maintenance, and (FIG) and the INTERGEO congress of the improvement of geodetic reference frames. German Association of Surveying, Geo- - Advanced development of terrestrial and information and Land Management. The space observation techniques for this contributions presented at this meeting are purpose. integrated into these proceedings.

The book contains the papers presented at the IAG Symposium on Vertical Reference Systems held in Cartagena, Colombia, in February 2001. It covers the status report of existing height reference systems and the latest steps towards the establishment of a unified vertical reference system. Classical and modern height determination techniques are included as well as the determination of height reference surfaces like sea level and geoid. Emphasis is also given to the variations of the reference systems with time, i.e., sea level changes and geodynamic deformations.