Geology 495/695: Environmental Geodesy
Course description and syllabus
Offered by Dr. Hans-Peter Plag
Tuesday, 1:00 - 3:00 PM, Location: LME 422.
January 18, 2011: Introduction to geodesy, the science of measuring the Earth's shape, gravity field, and rotation: brief history of geodesy, introduction of today's situation with three distinct pillars, mentioning of emerging new applications, and introduction of the key terms related to geodetic reference frames.
January 25, 2011: Geodetic reference systems and frames: introduction of terrestrial and celestial reference systems and Earth rotation as the link between terrestrial and celestial systems. Introduction of the concept of realization of these systems through reference frames, and discussion of the challenges of doing this on a dynamic, changing Earth. Review of existing systems and frames, and differences in the frames. Future developments.
February 1, 2011: Earth's shape: Descriptive approach to changes in Earth's shape including the ice and ocean surface. The long-term mean shape of the Earth will be considered briefly. Main focus will be on changes in the shape: starting from co-seismic displacements, seismic waves and free oscillations, going over Earth and ocean tides, atmospheric, hydrological, and glacial loading, to sediment loading and tectonic changes, the various phenomena of surface displacements will be considered.
February 8, 2011: Gravity field of the Earth: basic terms related to the gravity field will be introduced, including the geoid.
February 15, 2011: Earth's rotation: The principle ideas and phenomena related to Earth's rotation will be introduced, including the nearly diurnal free wobble, the Chandler wobble, and precession and nutation. The current understanding of the rotational dynamics and the origin of Earth's rotation perturbations will be presented.
February 22, 2011: Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR), Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR), Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellites (DORIS): observing point motion and maintaining global geodetic reference frames.
March 1, 2011: Satellite altimetry, InSAR, LIDAR, GNSS reflectometry: observing surface displacements with imaging geodesy.
March 8, 2011: CHAMP, GRACE, GOCE: observing the Earth gravity field from space.
March 22, 2011: Absolute and cryogenic gravimeters: observing gravity changes on the Earth's surface.
March 29, 2011: Surface displacements and their relation to tectonic strain, temporal changes in strain rates, co-, pre-, and postseismic deformations.
April 4, 2011: Surface displacements associated with hydrological, cryospheric, oceanic, and atmospheric loading.
April 5, 2011: Observing sea level and ice sheet changes.
April 18, 2011: Geodetic observations and numerical weather forecast, climatology, space weather.
April 19, 2011: Tsunami early warning, atmospheric/ionospheric seismology, earthquakes and LOD.
April 26, 2011: Hydrogeodesy: Monitoring the global water cycle with geodetic observations.
May 10, 2011: Finals.