The third Alaska Coastal Mapping Summit was hosted as a virtual meeting by federal partners and the state of Alaska. NOS Acting Assistant Administrator Nicole LeBoeuf gave pre-recorded remarks to kick off the Summit. NGS Director Juliana Blackwell provided a keynote speech. NGS representatives also gave updates on the Coastal Mapping Program and hosted a feedback session on activities in Alaska for modernization of the National Spatial Reference System.
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NGS met with stakeholders from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the Applied Research Laboratories at the University of Texas-Austin to agree on plans to add Global Navigation
Satellite System (GNSS) sensors at all 10 sites of the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) network
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NGS employees represented the U.S. in the virtual plenary meeting of the
Sistema de Referencia Geocéntrico para las Américas (SIRGAS). SIRGAS is an organization of scientific and national geodetic agencies in the Americas, established in 1993 to modernize legacy national geodetic data systems with a unified geocentric reference frame.
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NGS announced plans to
suppress published heights for datasheets in southeast Texas, including the Galveston, Beaumont, and Houston areas, starting in January 2021. The suppressed heights will be listed in the superseded section of the datasheets. Until new surveys are completed,
only 28 out of 7,500 marks in the region will have heights considered valid
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The ninth plenary session of the regional committee of the
United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management for Asia and the Pacific (UN-GGIM-AP) was held both virtually and in Bangkok, Thailand
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NGS collected aerial damage assessment images in the aftermath of Hurricane Zeta. NGS flight crews collected images in specific areas identified by NOAA in coordination with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other state and federal partners. The crew flew more than 6,770 square kilometers during 13.5 hours and collected 8,605 images...more
Over the previous two years, staff from the NGS's Observation and Analysis and System Development divisions have worked with
Canadian Geodetic Survey staff to publish positioning information for NGS survey marks located in Canada. This NGS positioning information will be publicly available to Canadians by the end of the calendar year
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NGS collected aerial damage assessment images in the aftermath of
Hurricane Delta. NGS flight crews collected images in specific areas identified by NOAA in coordination with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other state and federal partners
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In Fiscal Year 2020, users submitted more than one million GPS survey data files to NOAA's
Online Positioning User Service (OPUS). This is more than double the normal usage in prior years.
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NGS is collaborating on
a study of land subsidence (the gradual sinking of the Earth’s surface) in the Chesapeake Bay region. The Bay is the nation’s largest estuary and has a faster rate of sea level rise than anywhere else on the East Coast.
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NGS collected aerial damage assessment images in the aftermath of
Hurricane Sally. NGS flight crews collected images in specific areas identified by NOAA in coordination with state and federal partners.
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NGS representatives, including NGS Director Juliana Blackwell and Chief Geodesist Dan Roman, participated in both the
AmeriGEO and
UN-GGIM: Americas meetings, as well as a joint meeting between the two groups.
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NGS released a new lesson titled
GNSS Positioning: Survey Planning and Data Acquisition. The lesson outlines best practices when using Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) in land surveys. It follows several surveyors as they plan a GNSS project
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NGS collected
aerial damage assessment images of areas affected by Hurricane Laura. Imagery was collected in areas identified by NOAA in coordination with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other state and federal partners.
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A
socioeconomic study estimates that the NGS Aeronautical Survey Program (ASP) is worth between $3 billion and $13.2 billion to the U.S. economy over the next decade. The study calculates the full value of ASP contributions to the 2019 economy at
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A
feature article published in The New York Times explains the societal benefits of streamlining the U.S. measurement system to include only one standard of measure for the foot. Currently there are two nearly identical definitions of the foot in use
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For the first time, geodetic models of Canada, Mexico, and the United States will be combined into a new experimental geoid model (xGEOID20). Agreement on a North American geoid model will allow global navigation satellite systems like GPS to be used for determining mean sea level heights, which will help prevent flooding in coastal communities.
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NGS collected and published
aerial damage assessment images of areas affected by Tropical Storm Isaias. Relevant areas were selected by NOAA in coordination with the U.S. Coast Guard. The flight crew flew over more than 2,700 square kilometers during 16.4 hours and collected 8,933 images of the storm damage.
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NGS has issued two Federal Register Notices (FRNs) concerning the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS), the nation’s geodetic coordinate system. The first notice announces
upcoming changes to the NSRS.
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Using astronomical data, NGS is taking its first deflection of the vertical (DoV) measurements in 30 years. The DoV of a point on Earth is a measure of how far the direction of gravity has shifted because of local anomalies, such as nearby mountains..
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NGS Director Juliana Blackwell and Chief Geodesist Dan Roman participated in a joint meeting of the
Pan-American Institute of Geography and History Pan-American Institute of Geography and History (PAIGH) and the
United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management (UN GGIM) U.S. Delegation.
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NGS's chief geodesist and its geodetic services division chief attended the virtual annual meeting of the
Canadian Geodetic Reference System Committee.
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NGS is announcing a
delay in the release of the modernized National Spatial Reference System (NSRS), the nation’s geographic coordinate system. NGS is dedicated to rolling out the modernized NSRS
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On June 11 the
White House announced a new
ten-year strategy for mapping the Alaskan shoreline and nearshore that was developed by NOAA, the State of Alaska, and the Alaska Mapping Executive Committee. The strategy includes plans
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NGS Chief Geodesist Dan Roman participated in a kick-off meeting for a joint NASA-NOAA project to separate vertical land motion (VLM) from apparent sea level rise (SLR) along shorelines. NGS’s expertise
on VLM will improve understanding of relative
SLR
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To explain the value of the NGS effort to modernize the nation's coordinate system to the public, NGS Director Juliana Blackwell, NGS chief geodesist Dan Roman, and a former NGS director were interviewed by the New York Times.
The article breaks down how recalibrating
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As part of the effort to modernize the nation's coordinate system, the National Spatial Reference System, NGS has released an interactive, beta version of its survey mark information page. Information about the locations and conditions of passive survey marks has historically been displayed online or in print as static NGS datasheets.
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NGS has released new maps and dashboards for exploring crowdsourced data in the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS), the nation's coordinate system. Through the NGS Online Positioning User Service (OPUS), people can upload survey-grade GPS data. The
OPUS Share Monthly Map and the
OPUS Shared Solutions Dashboard lets users explore these data interactively.
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NGS’s National Spatial Reference System Modernization Manager presented
a webinar on the NGS 2022 datum modernization efforts to nearly 1,000 industry professionals
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NGS Director Juliana Blackwell attended (via webinar) NOAA's biannual meeting of the
Hydrographic Services Review Panel (HSRP) federal advisory committee
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NGS has launched a
new online form that allows for the submission of survey mark recoveries. A survey mark is any permanent mark or disk
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NGS announced that the
official civilian vertical datum for Tutuila, American Samoa, will revert to the Local Tidal (LT) datum for surveying and mapping activities.
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NGS’s
emergency response imagery, collected after Hurricane Michael, is being used in educational resources for National Geographic.
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For the first time, NGS conducted its annual All Hands Convocation Meeting completely online. Approximately 180 federal employees and affiliates convened to engage in a two-day web conference and exchange information on the progress of the modernization of the
National Spatial Reference System...more
NGS Geodesist Derek van Westrum conducted a public
webinar explaining the role of the NGS Gravity Program and how it improves GPS and mapping applications for people in the United States.
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NGS Chief Geodesist Dan Roman represented NOAA during U.S.-Canada Global Navigation Satellite System
bilateral discussions..
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NGS's Remote Sensing Division collected
damage assessment imagery to support tornado emergency response in Nashville, Tennessee. More than 1,100 images were collected in the area most impacted by a tornado on March 3, 2020.
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According to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, major enhancements to the geodetic infrastructure are needed to satisfy emerging scientific needs.
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NGS Chief Geodesist Dan Roman, PhD, represented the Department of Commerce and NOAA in an Interagency Working Group (IWG) organized by the National Science and Technology Council.
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NGS is celebrating 40 years as a pioneer in the field of crowdsourced data collection. In 1980, NGS published the first NGS Bluebook, establishing procedures for the public to send geodetic survey data to NGS for quality assurance inspection and analysis.
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NGS Acting Director Brad Kearse and Chief Geodesist Dan Roman briefed Deputy NOAA Administrator RDML Tim Gallaudet and NOS Acting Assistant Administrator Nicole LeBoeuf on NOS Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) activities.
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At the end of January, NGS senior leadership met with grant partners in the
Gulf Coast to discuss national priorities for geodetic research and the NGS vision for growing the community of practice in geodesy.
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NGS monitors a national network of
Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) that ultimately feeds into the International Terrestrial Reference Frame, which provides coordinates for the world's navigation systems.
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NGS field staff conducted a geodetic local site survey at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which is located below the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii. The site is particularly important to the
International Earth Rotation and Reference System Service (IERS) ...more
NGS Director Juliana Blackwell and other senior NGS staff participated in the "NSRS Modernization Update and Federal Coordination Planning" meeting
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NGS Deputy Director Brad Kearse and senior staff recently visited the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in St. Louis, Missouri, to discuss strategic partnerships and research opportunities in the
field of geodesy ...more
At the
2019 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco, California, NGS and NASA presented a poster titled "High-Resolution Temporal Geoid Change Modeling in Alaska for a New Geopotential Datum."
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