Geodetic Journey

Traditionally, geodesy has been serving other sciences and many societal applications, including mapping and navigation. This aspect has remained unchanged, and a principal tool and output of geodesy is a reference frame allowing the determination of the position of points relative to each other. In particular, today geodesy provides the foundation on which all Earth observation systems are built. In this function, geodesy is essential for Earth observation just like the foundation and frame of a house are necessary to keep it stable over time. But geodesy has developed into a science that can no longer satisfy this service aspect without encompassing and monitoring the whole Earth system, its kinematic and dynamics: With the advent of satellite geodesy and an accuracy improvement of more than three orders of magnitude over the last three decades, geodesy has developed into a science making unique contributions to the study of the Earth system, its inherent dynamics, and its response to climate change , as well as a tool underpinning a wide variety of other remote sensing techniques. Facilitated by the Global Navigation Satellite Systems such as GPS, a wide and growing variety of applications associated with positioning and navigation is opening up, particularly in combination with products derived from global geodetic observations. Geodesy also provides comprehensive observations of changes in the Earth's shape, gravity field and rotation. The principle geodetic quantities associated with these three areas are intimately related to mass transport in the fluid envelope of the solid Earth and its interior, as well as the dynamics of the Earth System. Therefore, today the geodetic observing system contributes essentially to the Earth observation database. It turns out, not surprisingly, that the geodetic observing system is similarly essential for exploring the planets, the solar system, and beyond.