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Local Geoid Determination

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Encyclopedia of Geodesy

Definition

The geoid is an equipotential surface of the Earth’s gravity field that has the same potential value as the mean sea level at a specific epoch. Geoid determination utilizes gravity data collected on the Earth’s surface and its vicinity to compute the geoid in the most rigorous way. To distinguish from global geoid determination which requires global data coverage, local geoid determination focuses only on local areas or regions.

Introduction

This entry serves as an introduction to local geoid computations. We try to make the entry concise and easy to read from a practitioner’s viewpoint. The geodetic boundary value problems and related potential theories can be found elsewhere in this volume and are not discussed here. This entry covers the basics of the geoid theories and computation methods, with emphasis on spectral combination of several types of gravity data in local areas, a common practice...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Geodetic Survey, Silver Spring, MD, USA

    Yan Ming Wang

  2. Canadian Geodetic Survey, SGB, Natural Resources Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Jianliang Huang

  3. Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping, Beijing, China

    Tao Jiang

  4. Department of Geomatics Engineering, University of Calgary, 2500 University Dr. NW, T2N 1N4, Calgary, AB, Canada

    Michael G. Sideris

Authors
  1. Yan Ming Wang
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  2. Jianliang Huang
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  3. Tao Jiang
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  4. Michael G. Sideris
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yan Ming Wang .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Geodetic Institute, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Erik Grafarend

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Wang, Y.M., Huang, J., Jiang, T., Sideris, M.G. (2016). Local Geoid Determination. In: Grafarend, E. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geodesy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02370-0_53-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02370-0_53-1

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