Preparing for NSRS Modernization: NGS Regional Activity in Alaska

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:04]three all right um welcome everyone and welcome folks online um my name is kaisha Wong so I'm the chair of the geomatics department and also the host for today's webinar today uh we are very in you know honored to have um Linda Bell uh to present the topic um which is preparing for modelization of the SRS NGS original activities so uh I'll get the introduction for Linda and then I'll let her to take the floor away while those folks are signing in I'm might give a couple minutes us hello a dinner today all right um so Linda is currently a fulltime civil servant for the Department of Commerce serving as a Alaska Regional geodetic advisor for Noah National geodetic survey which is NGS she is Duty stationed in Anchorage and served as a zone between NGS and its public academic and private sector C customers within Alaska providing guidance and assistance on geospatial activities that are tied to the National spatial reference system uh Linda has also had an opportunity to serve several other federal agencies in the geospatial community working as a geophysicist and a senior scientist at Nasa G space flight center in grimbel Maryland and as a a sea level specialist at the National Park Service headquarters in Fort columns Colorado also for witch brought her to work in Alaska through her career so now the floor is yours thank you so much um hello everyone thank you for joining us both in the classroom and those of you who are remote um it's really my distinct honor here to be at the University um supporting the programs that are here at University of Alaska Anchorage and sharing with you some of the work that we are doing uh both nationally and internationally at Noah's National genetic survey and then we'll bring a story down toward what's really happening in Alaska so sit back relax if you're in the room enjoy some food um I'm going to tell you the story we will continue on through um the slides and then have a big Q&A at the end so I try to make your show a little lighter so we had more time for discussion also happy to go back if you want to take notes to anything in the slideshow that you wanted to know more about um we'll go back in the Q&A and dig in and take a deeper dive so thanks again for attending and we'll go ahead and get started so today I'm going to be presenting to you a talk on how we are preparing for the modernization of the national spatial reference system and we'll also show how um particularly in Alaska how there's Regional activity in support of that preparation so let's start just for a minute and talk about my organization so folks often wonder why is National geodetic survey inside Noah isn't Noah about atmospher oceans and why are we there but really historically we were the US Coast and geodetic Survey so we've been part of the maritime World from the very very beginning and so we are seated under the national ocean service inside of Noah and we are the National geodetic survey so we were actually the nation's first civilian science agency for more than 200 years NGS and its predecessor agencies have collaborated with public and private organizations to establish reference stations that precisely determined locations and you can see in these pictures some historic uh survey work being done in our country turn of the century and sooner we have gone through some historic organizational and scientific milestones at uh Noah's NGS we started way way way way back in 180 seven where Jefferson Thomas Jefferson founded the survey of the coast and then we were placed under the Navy returned to the treasury and then we became the US Coast and geodetic Survey in 1878 then we moved into 1901 into under the National Bureau of Standards transferred to Commerce and labor and in 1913 we officially transferred to the Department of Commerce in 1970 Noah formed the o national ocean Sur service which is our line office today and then we were divided into separate functions under the coast and jtic survey we were then put out into the line Office of the national ocean service and in 2007 we celebrated the 200th anniversary of survey and coast and in 2020 we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association known as Noah some scientific Milestones that met during that same time some of our first field work was completed covering the New York City area in the early 1800s some of the first use of telegraph signals to transfer time for as astronomic observations the method of Le squares was introduced first gravimetric observations in the US in 1875 the Transcontinental Arc of triangulation was completed in 1896 and then a line of spirit levels across the United States the whole country was completed in 1907 we went on then as we develop better and and more recent technology uh to get some of the first Coastal mapping and aerial photography we developed the state plane coordinate system which we just now updated and modernized across the us all the way back in 1934 we continued forward in this progression of these scientific Milestones to look at um observing a satellite triangulation Network to five meter accuracy and in in 73 up to 83 we started to develop and move toward the first use that NGS had of the global positioning system which had been developed before that but 1983 you may know of a reference system called mad 83 was the first time that we were using GPS at NGS in the mid90s we moved to the first hybrid geid model developed by NGS and then in in 2001 and I'm going to talk about this tool today I'm actually about to do a training next week online for ngss online positioning user service we established that in 2001 and then finally recently in 2007 we began the survey of gravity to redefine the American vertical datum gravity project and some of my last slides the great news is here in Alaska this summer 15 years of flying the country to get that data set it's finished so we have that to celebrate and we finished up right here in Alaska so I'll show you some really cool photos and slides about that later on in the show so thinking about all of that history and that progression that we've made I think the finest thing that we can tout and that we stick to and that we're strict about is setting a geodetic standard at NGS so some of you who may know about our work and you've heard about us modernizing our DMs wonder why so long why is it taking this long what time will it be ready and the answer is when it's correct that's a big deal you know to reestablish the datums that are underneath all of our positioning points in the US and that's that's tied to the igsa International gex System and if it's not right we're in big trouble so the time that it takes with a very small group of experts NGS is very very small my organization's only about 150 to 200 people total the people that are the geodis developing the modernization um geoids and datums they are about 10 to 20 people amongst our orbiters in the chors program and then our geis so a very small Elite group of brilliant people testing everything they're doing beta testing it all the way from all the other experts in the world to the users as well so we beta test everything before release and that standard is something I'm going to talk about next and why why is that important more recently NGS has fostered a network of continuously operating reference stations which we call cores where each cores includes a highly accurate receiver that continuously collects radio signals broadcast by what we used to call the GPS system is now the gnss system or the global navigation satellite system that is because we have Suites of satellites from all over the world now that we use and if you have a more um recent receiver antenna system and you're a surveyor you are receiving gnss data that's forms a network that we use to accurately position other points of interest so we now have a very clear Mission currently NGS is Mission and maybe it turn a century in earlier it was to map the US right that's we were part of the early mapping Cru people went out themselves you know way way back I remember seeing NGS days sheets when I first started working in Alaska when I worked for NASA we were doing work up here and um you would see like you know the crews equipment list included things like donkeys and packs and chains you know so to imagine this great vast land was first maed that way and now we have the privilege of this incredible technology that allows us to create these three-dimensional pictures of that very same surface that people had to walk with their feet to measure not that long ago so it's something that I think is extraordinary and I'm really proud to be part of it so our mission now is to Define maintain and provide access to the National spatial reference system we're going to talk a little more about what that is the quick definition is the nsrs is a consistent coordinate system that defines latitude longitude height scale gravity orientation and Shoreline throughout the US so let's break that down a little bit more if we're trying to Define this this point position system we need to understand what a data in a reference frame is in this particular lecture I'm not going to go in in tremendous depth there could be whole whole entire lectures and courses really on this subject and this is sort of the meat of the science of geodyssey which is measuring the shape and three dimensions of the of the Earth or of a planet so in this case we're going to just quickly look at what these definition are to have those in our mind as we go forward and understand what the nsrs is so quick definition a geodetic data reference frame isn't oops sorry about that I was trying the laser I Advance there we go a dtic data reference frame is an abstract coordinate system with a reference surface such as sea level that serves to provide known locations to begin surveys and create Maps NGS defines That official geodetic dams for all federal mapping activities in the US as part of the national spatial reference system and just broadly but there's more detail in this we have a series of vertical datums they can be everything from title to land horizontal and geometric dams and title datums of of various types and different branches of NOA are working with us to establish those datam so NOA coops is particularly working on upgrading and updating the title data and the and another project I'll talk about later is called we call an Alaska V Daton which is a improving the vertical Daton um across the country is something that's huge and still being worked on here in Alaska really crucial with our very um complex vertical data that we have in particular in our tectonic regimes in our coastal areas where we have isostatic rebound from glaciers so Alaska provides the largest challenge in understanding these vertical data within the country so the nuts and bolts of what we do at NGS I want to go over that a little bit before we get a little bit deeper into some of the other work um again the mission of the NGS was to Define maintain and provide access to the nsrs the nsrs provides a consistent coordinat system let say that one more time that defines latitude longitude height scale gravity and orientation throughout the US and its territories so how do we do that what kind of data do we take in we look at gnss and and GPS data we look at remote sensing data land surveying data getic data we use training and education and we continue to work with our geodis and our orbiters on defining data and Transformations for your data as well so to do that we've developed this whole series of products and services at one point in the lecture I I have a couple hot links on slides where I'll click and we'll look for a moment just at the NGS website and we can spend more time on that um at the end too for questions where I can Empower you to go on we've really tried to publish a lot of tools to have in your hands including our free online positioning user service Opus to to process your data for free and submit it to us for free and then we can help put that into our database so those tools because we're a government agency are free to the public and our website is pretty dense with tools and training materials for your use so I'll make sure I point those out before I go today so that after this introduction you have time to dig deeper if you'd like so just a quick list and this is this isn't the whole list by a long shot but in general the big things that we're working on right now like I just spoke to was the vertical data transformation tool gravity for the redefinition of the American vertical data or we call that grab D improving our emergency response imagery I don't know if a lot of people know that NGS is in the remote sensing division um within Noah we're the hurricane Chasers you know those guys where you you see them flying into the storms and they their planes called Miss Piggy and they take these amazing I mean if you've ever seen footage of them there's a bunch of fun YouTube videos out where they're being jled around inside the plane and collecting this important storm imagery real time that we're use we're able to use now to actually evacuate people so that's inside NGS so the hurricane chasers live inside of our organization as well um we also work on continuing to have a better understanding and support ecosystem and climate operations we work very closely with FEMA and other folks in the climate change world of Academia to really use our data to help better understand um climate and our ecosystem so some of our big products and we'll go through some of them as nsrs uh Kors Opus our airport surveys where we historically NGS is if you're a surveyor um you you've ever done a px and sacks survey at an airport that's something that we help you with and support you with we have an interface between the surveying community and FAA so we work with our surveying community on Airport surveys um Shoreline mapping and then we also process GPS satellite orbits with our orbiters in the fores branch at NGM yes so the online positioning user service Opus um you know I think I'm not going to click on the links right now and to keep telling the story then we'll go back and pull up the website but if you I assume the slideshow will be available to everyone online in class later um on these slides anytime I have a hot link it's it's highlighted colored in bold so you can click and and dig deeper they link you right into those parts of our website so feel free to use the slideshow as a tutorial later but for today for timeliness I think I'll quickly just give you an overview but encourage you to dig deeper if you're interested so this for instance is the link to our main website for NGS and these would take you deeper into studying and reading more about nsrs and about the Noah course Network and there's a nice series of stuff here everything from our actual products and services you can use to um all the papers that have been written supporting the work at yes you know there's a literature search that's attached to these links so lots and lots of good information tutorial videos all kinds of good stuff so what is Opus well what it spells out and we're famous in the government for our acronyms and what it spells out as the online positioning user service that provides free access to high accuracy nsrs coordinates Opus uses our in-house developed software and it computes core orates using data from the Noah Kors Network so let's talk about what that Noah Kors network is Kors stands for I'm going to switch side to the room for a minute cores stands for continuously operating reference stations you can see here this is a map and of course it doesn't have Alaska in it but we have some in Alaska too um I have to change this slide now that I'm the Alaska advisor a little bit embarrassing I'm so sorry but to start with let's look at the lower 48 even though we hate to do that here in Alaska um just to see this coverage and it's not this dense in Alaska and you can see in the middle of the US it's not as dense for stations so what is this continuously operating Reference Station Network and what are these sites they're basically a GPS or gnss site that's permanently attached or monumented to the ground or a building or a pillar and there's a receiver that's housed in a protected box if it's a remote area or a building um we have un universities that will often house these these stations and so you're collecting and you can sample as quickly as every second if you want to for scientific data collecting GPS or gnss data continuously non-stop 247 and we manage in the no of course Network that data so these stations are very rarely owned or built by us we may come out and help you teach workshops help you build a station but these are volunteer coordinators that work directly with nggs and they are the ones sitting at the site or sitting in the state with with that core station or managing it from their organization and we are watching the data so our cores team is doing 20 well we are doing 247 along with the instrument collecting data is we're we're analyzing and watching the data so that's the gain I'm working right now with um Peter Flint from Department of Natural Resources and others in the state of Alaska who are building What's called the 8 Corner the Alaska cor Network and we're working on folding that in to the NOA cor Network so that we can help manage that data that can be a frustrating thing if you've been funded you build your great stations and then you've got this mass of data because it's 247 data coming in and you may not have the infrastructure to ingest that data analyze it and publish it that is what that's where we come in so if you partner with us and and you and we help you set up a station that gives the quality of data that nggs expects in our database we not only get that data to improve our um ability to to uh to modernize the data we also provide a service back to you where we're able to watch your data and I've been in the field when I finished serving as an adviser before Alaska to the southw W I was there for two years same job but a different region of the country and I was in the field where we did this real time so I can prove that we really are interactive with you so we had a Coors um operator I think it was University of New Mexico and we had our Grand Chief and all of our tech people and our it people in a zoom call and also on their smartphone and we literally helped troubleshoot a station and get it back and running and that that team from NGS and Noah was everywhere from Hawaii to Washington DC and the operator was standing there at their station in New Mexico and it was a success so that I wanted to just tell that story to encourage you if you're in the community and you might be part of this core's effort to know that coming inside the fold of the Noah Network allows us to help you that way help you maintain your station maintain your data and adest your data so we use on the best data this good quality high quality continuous data to better understand our datums and then to also create transformation tools for you to transform your data into current accepted datums at NGS so as the accuracy and precision of geospatial data increases it's becoming more important to manage your data carefully and use consistent reference frames NGS defines those datums as the foundation for positioning for the United States and territories NGS also provides transfer tools to help Align data and to transform coordinates between other vams and projections so how do we do that to manage the national spatial reference system we go to these particular components to break it down a little bit so to manage it we have to look at all of these pieces we have to do a good job at understanding geodetic positional coordinates we have to understand how to define the GE geop potential um geopotential what is the word I wanted there um geid acceleration of gravity the deflection of the vertical improve our models our tools and our guidelines improve our ability to map the official national Shoreline as I said before we have inhouse people who are um publishing our gns as orbits and also to improve our ability to understand orientation skill and offset information some of the tools and these are H linked again in your slideshow if you go back later to read more about it that are the big ones that we provide to help people in the surveying and geospatial Community transfer their datums into the modernized dams we have something called ncat I'm working with um our training folks to start um doing more training on just and Cat I think as we prepare to modernize a lot of people ask us those questions more out speaking nationally what can I do and we're going to get to that next in the story here in this slideshow one of which is we have tools that allow you to input your data in any data that it's in and then it transfers it into the modern datums training on how to use incat i' I've found in my last couple years advising around the US is a weak spot I think in our education so I want to improve that when I'm here in Alaska in addition to Opus training and other things we've traditionally done fi operations and all those sorts of things I want to add these transformation tool trainings in because we've only got about two more years till the release of the modernized atams so I'm looking and all of the people on my advisor team across the US are looking at how we can help you get ready so that it's not this big learning curve all of a sudden when things change we also have a vertical datum transformation tool which we talked about earlier called vatm that converts elevation data from various sources into a common reference system we have our horizontal time dependent positioning utility the htdp that transforms positions across time and spatial reference frames and then some of you if you're in the surveying community may have been involved in Alaska submitting proposals of all the different projections that are typically used in our surveying community in Alaska into the state plane coordinate system State plane 83 and the new one the new state plan Pate system is the first of the modernized releases 2022 just came out Alaska was part of that as well and that provides coordinates on a flat grid for easy comput computation um honoring and utilizing small sort of um local Centric coordinate systems that surveyors typically have had to create to manage um local surveys maybe in a town or a subdivision or or utility lines or things like that uh we work with the Department of Transportation and other groups like that as well so some of these big data sets that we're using to do all of this and that these transformation tools can work with as well um we have um some of the products that come out of it are Opus share Solutions we uh have NGS gtic control that's improved and shown on our map the data Explorer on our website this the classic survey Mark data sheets that we've all used in our careers if you're in in the world of surveying and and geodyssey um the antenna calibration data that folks enter into our idb uh we manage all of the remote sensing data for the country again like I was saying earlier that can have to do with um imagery from everything from you know a current storm to long-term atmospheric changes that we see long-term changes in the ocean of sea level um and that helps a lot those kinds of imagery the coastal and storm really help us in in understanding how to model what's happening on our coastlines as climate changes and we we also use lar data aeronautical data gravity and orbit data so now we're to the part and I'm just going to pause for a minute we talked a lot about history and if you kind of imagine we just kind of came through a funnel and we started with the broad picture of what my organization has done historically what our mission is again we're reminded the mission is to modernize the nsrs and this SL is going to be about well why did we need to do that would all that good work and all that mapping that NGS has done over these hundreds of years isn't that good enough why do we suddenly think the data needed to be modernized so that's what I want to talk a little bit about in this slide why we need to improve it is this the national geodetic survey has been working over the last 10 plus years to remove inaccuracies in the existing datums of the US so they weren't accurate they weren't as accurate as they needed to be by tracking the dynamic nature of the earth and giving users tools to account for it NGS will provide a new National spatial reference system that's semidynamic by fully embracing the benefits of gnss as the positioning tool of today and of the future NGS will effectively link The Replacements for nad83 and navd88 through a geocentric reference frame and a gravimetric geoid model this was quoted from Dr Drew Smith who's our chief geodist developing these modernized datas with his team in Washington DC at headquarters so the reality is as our you know as our expert geodist started to really dig in and take a look at um how well we were doing in defining our reference systems and our datums we saw things going on there were there was some you know earth related tilt happening in the data there was some offset in the data now think about the complexity of Drew Smith and his team's job think about surveying an Alaska so if you're defining a point on the ground in Alaska and you're standing in an area that's moving in some direction within that complex abduction Zone we're in here at inkage for example right we also have interesting soils here too right because we're in this Coastal environment and things can be slipping and slurrying under our feet as well the geology is moving at the crustal level we've got nearby glaciers that are changing and how much load they're putting on and off the Earth and you're just simply trying to survey a point on that plan on that spot you're on and all of that's going on so defining the data and understanding how that imaginary line that we call sea level or zero kind of you know is there underneath our feet with all of that going on requires complex modeling and so the geodis at NGS realized that over the years and they've Incorporated plate motion and many other ground motion models into our definition of data but even with all that work we had a little more to go so that's really what the modernization was about and we're very close to the release within about two I think realistically actually about two years we will call it 20122 the new datam because that was the first projected date we set and promised we'd have it ready um but we' had to work some more so we'll still call it that but realistically is we're looking at about a 2-year plus release from today so I'm going to take a pause a minute and we're going to enjoy this video and this this takes us back to that idea of excellence in gosy you know setting a standard this was a standard that I was taught so this person about to speak to us is retired he was my first boss and I was very lucky as an undergrad intern that Virginia Tech is a young geophysicist to work for Dr chopo ma chopo ma and Tom Clark were the fathers of the technique called very long Baseline of deometry that is what they did their graduate work on in the 60s and 70s at University of nland and they started the whole Branch at Nasa that I got to intern in which back then was called the crustal Dynamics branch and they were all radio astronomers that were using these incredible big dishes to measure quazar at deep space not satellites we that that little Suite of GPS satellites were starting to orbit but before that as sters were measuring positions from quazars at the edge of the universe and those quazars are transmitting radio signals so the Brilliance of this receiver and the accuracy of its ability to receive these far distance radio signals allowed us to position so accurately that it far outweighs the Precision and accuracy and the greatest jnss data that we have today the greatest altmetric data that we have today the greatest lar data that we have today these old guys still beat it and so Dr ma is going to speak to us in this video because really my ability to learn about what geodyssey was and to hold that standard and that Excellence came from my early training I was so fortunate to have at Nasa so this was the the brains behind it all were NASA scientists in my early year survey in Alaska um as a scientist we got to use NASA laboratory instruments and test them against Trimble and the gelon and all the you know commercial people coming out so I got to use the JPL turbo rope my first time surveying because we were measuring some of the first plate motions in Alaska in the world in Alaska so we got to use this this stuff where you know all of the brilliant mines at Nasa and MIT were allowing us to take in pcode scramble military data that you could not see as a common surveyor and our our Brilliant Minds like you know I worked with people that are now the heads of the international agencies in giy so all of the folks at MIT would secretly descramble that data feed it back to us scientists at Nasa so that we could get subcentimeter Precision in the vertical and close to subcentimeter in some of vertical and that was in the 90s so this technology and that idea came from the Brilliance of Minds like Dr M I'm going to go ahead and play and I hope I can make this work right I think if I Advance the slide it'll play the video Let's just check my name is tropar my primary job these days seems to be in charge of NASA's ktic vvi program when NASA started in this area of space geoy using DBI there were different questions that were uh really interesting to answer for example whether plates like the North American Plate in Europe the continents were actually moving the questions now uh are fundamental metrics so that from the space geodyssey measurements we can develop a very precise terrestrial reference frame the ability to know on the Earth from one place to another and from one time to another how things are related up down east west north south and this is very important for measurements which are small in nature but take some time to measure properly like what happens with the sea level rise and whether it's uniform over the whole globe or not thebi and the other techniques are working to make improvements to make these types of fundamental measurements to allow other SS to be done more accurately and to make the interpretation more [Music] secure get to come back at this point in my career to um the place I started so Alaska is where I started and this is my you know probably my last tenure as at least a federal scientist I probably will buy back we to Academia and teach again after that but to to be able to come full circle to be trained by Minds like that um has carried me through a unique path that I wouldn't have had without that training and I feel very lucky um to do that so that that standard of Excellence is something that I brought through all my education undergrad and graduate education through my professional career with several federal agencies um and I feel like now that I really work more intimately with real life surveyors who are out working in the field that level of Excellence is something that I try to bring into my teaching and into my trainings because we often get that question well I don't need that I I my accuracy is good enough to a Meer for what I'm doing for my work and I say why not be to Scientific level grade accuracy because if you're working and you're getting paid to do a job why not do it to the best ability that we can we scientists will gain as well from that data to be able to understand these Earth Systems but you will as well and doing the very best job that you can surveyor so a lot of the work that we're doing in training across the country now teaching how to build a braced Monument um is one of the workshops I've been working on our course BR Chief John Alaska we'll be doing some of that work in Alaska in the next summer um understanding our our services that we have to improve your ability to analyze your data but just even best practices when I worked in the southwest my state coordinators there really were active in their surveying community and helped us um improve best practices for the survey community so in the end if they submitted their data to nggs it was scientific GRE and we could use it for our models and they also improve their ability to do their job better so that Excellence I think is important for all of us and now we have this incredible Suite of satellites you can see in that picture far far out to the one side is that is that quazar the radio signals that are measured by the ldi see here that big antenna that Dr ma was just in is here measuring this quar signal during that same period when um chopo and Tom Clark and others in the NASA were starting this work we also did have this satellite the satellite laser Ranger and so we were getting that signals and we collocated our VV site sometimes with these sites measuring Sr satellite laser ranging and we call those Doris sites and we have there I'm sorry we call those multi uh constellation sites and we could be measuring Doris signals quazar signals with f bi or SLR from the SLR satellite in Cold Bay Alaska and we had a vbi station in Fairbanks Alaska and I actually worked at that station as a young in for NASA and so that is now defun it's I I went out to see it but I came back to Alaska and I was shed a tear because it's just sitting pointed to space and its hydraulics are not attached but it could be if it got refunded and we could collect data in the meantime JPL and NASA put a couple of gnss sites out there and we are going to be building NGS a foundation core station at Gilmer Creek facility as well as the cold Bay facility next summer so we've awarded money from um President Biden's infrastructure Bill to a contractor who will be doing that work across the country and we will be piloting some of that here in Alaska this is a really great tool again I just loved this slide I think um a couple of folks put together um some of our brilliant Folks at Earth scope which used to be unavco um we've got a couple NSF folks I think this was maybe spearheaded by NS this figure is one of my favorite figures to really talk about what GPS can tell us about on Earth so I encourage you to take a look at all the little detail in this uh when you go back and study the slideshow um but we can look at everything from the ionosphere to the troposphere um to snow depth ice height sea level change vegetation change and soil moisture all with a very simpal fairly inexpensive gmss antenna so if You' never seen a BRAC Monument this is sort of the highest level we consider in gnss surveying style monumentation and a choking antenna under this ROM which is a transparent type of plastic that the signal can get through but it also protects the antenna these brace Monument tripods are not a temporary tripod if you've not seen them before you have quite a few of them in Alaska but they're drilled into the geology if it's either Bedrock or um pounded into soter refusal and they're just long steel rods they're welded together and then we place the chra antenna on top in a Rao cabling then run to a a box that contains coms receiver cooling things if it's in a hot environment warming things if a cold environment and the solar panel so that's a standalone Coors gnss station in the picture and I like this uh figure because it shows us all the amazing things we can do and if you place one of these guys near a body of water you actually can use something called gnss IR or reflectometry um technology where a reflected signal from the water if your station's close to enough comes back to the GPS or the gnss and you actually can get water height measurements so Dr um Christine spearheaded that from CD Boulder and our folks up here at uaf um at the um geophysical Institute also work with that kind of data so we have real experts in this field right here at uh UAA and uaf in Alaska and so one of the things we do provide is this high accuracy gnss data processing at NGS we talked a little about that a minute ago in the slides and a new thing that we've added to our our ability to process your data from the field is we now take in um a new file format which is called the gnss vector exchange format or gbx and that allows us to more consistently use gnss vectors in survey networks so if you're rtk surveyor and you're going out to rtk data Opus is now set up to um ingest that data in this GDX format so now you can use both your static and dynamic data in our software and in the course I'm teaching in the next Monday Tuesday and Wednesday online um I'll be teaching Inus course virtually to the country and part of that will be how do we in ingest this new gbx style data if you are taking an RT data so I'm just I just put this slide back in a minute just for a placeholder to go a little deeper on some news about the Kors Network now the national Kors Network I'm talking a little bit about it in application with some of these other slides one of the things that we advisers do is we support the Coors Network so a regional jtic advisor which is what I am is a federal employee of Noah's National judic survey we serve as a Le sorry a liaison between NGS and our public academic and private sector constituents who are managing the geodetic component of geospatial activities tied to the nsrs in our region we assist in the management of core stations and that is a very incal part of our job as advisers to support the nsrs so here's some pictures U this is Fran columa she's on our cores team um but this is also a group of advisers um out just doing some trouble shooting This was um let's see where was this um this was I think in the Great Lakes area and we had um one of our advisers Jeff jabowski we had people that used to be advisers in the Great Lakes area we had Fran who's on our Poors Team all come out together and work with this station and they gave technical support to the station operators like helping people change out receivers and antennas at the tour stations helping update the firmware helping make sure your con activity is working uh we help with building out networks collaborating with groups we are often troubleshooting emails and phone calls to go through other issues this is a really big part of my job I'm already Super Active and what's happening with Kors here in Alaska I just onboarded in June in Alaska and we're already rocking and rolling with all kinds of great stuff going on with course work and the foundation course program in Alaska we going to talk more about that in a minute so I just briefly referred to this before just to reminder again we are so grateful to our station coordinators because you are our partners and we couldn't do it without you you are the ones who either build own or manage our stations we are helping with the data side so this plot just shows how many ncn station owner operator Partners we have by type so if you look we've got 10% of feds 11% foreign government do makes up 30 uh makes up 21% uh local government 27% Private Industry 133% and University 15% we also have other state government entities as well so this is the big partnership group really that are the cores Network it's certain not just us and so here's the types that uh that are actually operated by each partner type we have a total of 1,890 active stations and if you take a look at that that chart again again our state partners are a really really big and really important part of that you can see the do makes up 44% so what about this course program what's the future of it so the really cool thing again we're pil piloting at Cold Bay because we have the DOR station we're piloting at Gilmore Creek and Fairbanks the old vbi is up there we are going around the country right now another big push from the infrastructure bill came toward our team to put in what are called Foundation cor so we're putting in those nice BRAC Monument gnss permanent core stations in redundancy of two to three stations at all of the big space geodetic observatories around the US so the VBA and Sor New Mexico that was in the movie contact with all this neat antennas we're going to be there we're going to be here at Fairbanks we're going to be here at Cold Bay at the DOR station and we're collocating these really cool Super gnss stations with those old space geodetic observatories before they go down before they're finally grandfathered so that we can collocate our data sets we've got this gorgeous set of data from these judaic observatories around the country that 30 plus years of dat data enough to really really model some things about our datum and this is how we Define International datums and now we're going to come around and put GPS units near them and collocate and co- collect data with these big antennas so that we can have overlap in the data set as we Define the data very very important for the redefinition and the modernization of the nsrs so here's an example of what that looks like so we're using it to Define like I said International terrestrial reference frames and maintain the geometric coordinate updates and provide access to meet our national needs and these needs serve surveyors and a broader base of stakeholders needing jtic control such as transportation and commerce across federal and state governments like the doc the do the US Army Corp of Engineers the USGS and many more GE spatial industry as a whole and scientific users so this picture shows this is um uh for Davis Texas the McDonald Observatory so here's the vbi antenna still it's in Stow which means it's not uh well it's tilted a little maybe it is observing in this picture here's the gnss station with a nice handy cow fence around it because cows in the desert in those open areas love to just rub against and scratch themselves on our beautiful gmss stations and you know they can bang them up pretty good so thinking about that in Alaska what's our animal here that we'd have to worry about the course bears and moose that's right yeah so we've got bears that will just Chomp right on through cables they have a nice fine lunch with our cables and they will you know tear it apart so we have to really think about that in Alaska is wildlife proofing um some of these stations in our remote areas this isn't a super clear um picture but basically just showing that those proposed Foundation cor here's Gilmore Creek here's Cold Bay in Alaska we also are looking in areas between us and Russia also in the Bearing Sea and then here we are across the US and you can see in our territories as well so this is an already funded program from the infrastructure bill um Happening Now contracts been awarded and we are going out starting we've already finished most of the Recon for all of the sites now and they will be starting construction um this year this coming here which is really exciting so that's just a quick idea that we are part of something even bigger here in Alaska at the national level and the international level future of course okay so we're down to the last little bit of the slideshow now and this is how you can prepare for modernization of the national spatial reference frame so if you go on our website you'll see we have these these fun one pager newsletters that come out under NGS news and this is the announcement new dams are coming coming and it tells a little about what that looks like but we also list here things that we can do in the community to prepare so we can transform our coordinates using encap we need to do a good job of recording our metadata by knowing our dams and ethics of your geospatial files perform GPS on benchmarks operations which were starting to fold to the end of that program but that was basically almost like geocaching we were in inviting people all over the country to go out and just set up if if it was a professional survey or just you had extra time and sit on a benchmark and collect some data and submit it to us so that's what that program was that just helped us build our database of control around the country and volunteers and folks from all over the industry helped to be part of that and then just finally review your state plan coordinate system requirements and some in our case we've already updated our legislation here in Alaska but other states in the US are still preparing to match their legislation the new defition missions of the state plane cording system in this early and this is a little more about our program that I just talked about there this is this is very typical of of when we're not behind the computer screen what we look like in the field here I am at the Great Lakes with the USGS we were doing um I'm sorry at the Great Salt Lake in Utah and that was us partnering with um the USGS and improving the data at the Great Salt Lake for better understanding of water level changes in the Great saltt Lake here's an example of another one of our advisor Team Ed Carlson in Hawaii and he's teaching a leveling course here in this picture so we do everything from going right out in the field and working with people in Partnership and then training um and and all the way down to staying with you in your project to looking at your data helping the analyze your data and then we're involved in these larger National partner scale projects as well so how we can prepare in the region is these new cores installations we're conducting more brace Monument workshops we're improving our core stations we've talked a lot about that already GPS on benchmarks improving control training more in Opus improving our vertical control like vative and grav d gtic control densification and our partnership work and finally the future of cores we just talked about Foundation cores so now we're going to wrap up our story and come back to Alaska and talk about some of the very exciting news that's happened to enhance and densify our jtic survey control in Alaska and we just we are the Pilot State I got a chance to Pilot this project where once a year across the region of the US NGS is going to release a yearly accomplishments newsletter so you go on our website Alaska is the first because we've accomplished a lot in Alaska not all under my watch by a long means but we are getting published and noticed out there nationally which is very cool so your work is important to us we want to continue to support you and show the the country and the world what you're doing here in Alaska so we've improved positioning in the vertical and horizontal ground truthing um that really is important I think when we're tying the gis community and surveying communities together because we have to pin that data down right we make an image as GIS mappers but to spatially analyze that image we have to understand the position that all those points in that point Cloud are tied to right and so ground truthing is important so that's where the surveying Community comes in if we improve our base station positions for lar aerial drone photometric and altimetric data we then are able to more clearly spatially analyze what that data is that we get from anything from you know from drones to fly over airplane data we want to have consistency in our datums through multiple data sets that we're using for digital elevation model I did my um PhD work on this and man is that complex when you are putting lots and lots and lots of data sets together and you have to pin them together with one consistent data tricky stuff so that's really important this consistency and by enhancing densification o gtic survey control we can be more consistent and how we Define that data so accomplishment in in Alaska we just finished um our aerial surveys in Alaska with the final set of flights flown through the summer of 2023 that brings this 15-year project to a successful completion this data will be a critical component in the development of the North American Pacific geop potential data of 2022 we also just started our work with Foundation cores which I was just talking about and I was part of this work as well when I got up here this summer so so we've got our sites at the Noah nesdis Gilmore Creek facility and the cold bay nasad door site Fairbanks in Cold Bay Alaska we've been identifying them for reconnaissance and future construction these braced Monument gnss F course stations and insar reflectors will be installed in 2024 in support of foundation core site development in crucial areas of Alaska and then B dat I'm still working on it but we're getting closer we work with Noah co-ops and other partners in Noah and other partners in uh the USGS and federal partnership and state partnership across the state we completed foundational gns estate observations the summer along targeted title benchmarks in the Cook Inlet the keenai peninsula and within Kenai FES National Park in support of ngss vertical datum transformation tool this was an excellent start in filling Coastal V datum observation gaps along the coast in southern Alaska with more work planned for FY 24 in the Gulf of Alaska we we worked with Partners from the US Coast Guard and the National Park Service to obtain these important Gap filling measurements along Southern Alaska's rugged Coastline so you see some of our technicians working with the Coast Guard right here just offshore from Kodiak Island here we have them a paddle boarding but they were supposed to that was how they had to get to their site was the paddle board from the Sak The NPS boat that took them out in keenai FS to get close to their remote sites here on the shoreline so they had a very fine time working with our part Service Partners out of Seward this summer so the road forward is the NGS is seeking to engage the entire geospatial Community to make the transition to new datums as seamless as possible we do that by supporting the current data while building the new and finally as always we want to thank you for supporting the nsrs and encourage you to reach out to us so we can support you and preparing for modernization thank you very much um thank you so much N I think it's very exciting um also you know share a lot of achievement for Alaska it's very exciting to see that um so we would like to take the questions from the room and folks online I think we are going to gather the questions for folks online and we're answer those questions so first and first any questions from the room for or comments yes are our International Partners using some of the same similar techniques are they currently are they currently doing some of the same work that that that you guys are doing right now that's a great question broad a broader effort yes sir certainly and we actually some of our NGS advisers and our leadses sit on the UN councils for that very thing so the International terrestrial reference frame is something that we are also a part of um in those International agencies so we have a group of a group of folks who are experts at NGS that regularly travel the world to make sure that we're all together working on the same ideas yeah you're welcome are some of the core stations like over in Russia as well you and I know some were foreign owned and stuff how does that work far that's a good question I don't know the coverage in Russia but I do know our Kors branch chief um was part of um putting in Kors stations um in Nepal so a lot of our we have a group here is now the name of the company is now Earth scope but they were un AFCO and they're very famous World um genetic surveyors and they've done a lot of work globally in setting up course networks all around all around the world but that's a good question about Russia I'll have to I don't know the answer that particular spot now just one other question as far as a practical matter say you have a section monument and for the new uh surveying data and more accuracy that you're able to achieve today say it's determined well now it's really two feet over here something from a practical standpoint how does that relate to land ownership and determining boundaries and stuff that is an excellent question and that's a reality of our work here isn't it every day in Alaska and so what I tell folks um is is take more measurements if you can this is this importance of the data record again right if something shifted and you don't know why if you've got continuous data or even a series of campaign data that's been collected at that site and you collect again you can look at that offset and we can help you analyze perhaps what that might be if there's other local data in the area that you know about hey there was some Landslide there there was something shifting or maybe I'm in the area where tectronics have an effect on site then we can look at that offset and understand what the acual position is versus the vector or the movement position so it it takes a little extra work but we encourage our surveying Community measure measure measure just keep taking data the more data you have an inciting question more help you understand and assess what's going on there and visual too photographs is such a simple thing but it's really helpful in some parts of Alaska we have such fast Coastal erosion that video is actually really useful data and I don't know if you heard of that movie Chasing Ice by James Glock from instar and they literally set video cameras of all over the world to watch Cal Retreat and I Retreat um it was so fast happening so quickly they just strapped cameras that could survive those Artic conditions and and we got video of these by so photographs and videos are also useful in assessing what's going any other questions in the room yeah I had a question about uh vertical data um transformation and going from nabd 88 to the 29 is that transformation tools that you've been mentioning have that capability in Alaska we're getting there okay I just making sure because like I remember looking at it a while back and I came to the conclusion that it wasn't going to help me and we have to go to our surveyor that their magic but I was just curious so sounds like we're working on that and then the idea would be moving ahead with the new vertical data that you would have that tool there to be able to go back all you know between okay that's correct and that's that's what the D tool is and that's what so what we're doing is still getting out and finishing you know the rest of the gnss control that we need at the old title benchmarks and joa here in acridge is one of our big contractors to Noah that's going out and doing um seasonal title measurements as well um um taking those gauges out and um and trying to get a better hold on the same idea that I mentioned in this gentleman the more data the better for us to find that so we're still we just put another big push of money came in actually to Alaska um here Mark and it's being used through the DMR and they are supporting and J is Contracting and doing that work right here so right now we are we're flush with good funding which is good news so it's time for us to get out there hustle do the work while we're funded um and we're here to support you guys in that so Alaska's flush with good amount of funding right now for us to improve our survey there any other questions in the room yes since you brought up funding does your funding stay pretty relatively consistent or does it wax and Wayne with administrations number two it waxes and W with Administration absolutely currently in the current Administration we're very well funded in our research especially in Noah um but particularly NGS got clay a bit ear mark because of the infrastructure bill um for us to support that structure so we're in good shape right now and um we're going to be very active in the next couple of years and we're already out this and and also your University is part of we put out a grant that UAA and maybe cash talk about that later but um you guys were a sub worde of that geospatial modeling Grant here at AA and we also have a sub awarde at uaf as well so that is money that is here to help support academic institutions and improving your education and this geomatics department here is going to be part of that so improving curriculum getting more students in I'm filling that we call the geodyssey crisis in our country where we have a lack of trained people in the geospatial world so um you're also funding Academia right now to improve and get more students in and help create the geospatial analyst of the teacher yes you've talked a lot about what presently is the technology that you're most likely using yes sir what do you see in the future and going on is it going to be more spatial outer space or is it going to be where we are going more with something here on Earth itself that we can that we know is the what would you say good truth for now and valid a point that's an excellent excellent point you just made I would see um definitely more and more Above This above us than where we standing as far as technology development to however that piece that I talked about one of those slides called Ground truth is crucial so we have we can't just assume that every fly by piece of data that we have especially in the advancements that we have in GIS right now beautiful three-dimensional gorgeous maps that we can make those maps are images floating in space if they're not truth to the ground so the need for surveying data will always be there and use it to enhance all the new technology of future where we have more and more satellites flying better and better constellations for measurements new technology that's going out there but without understanding if it's accurately pinned to a point on the planet it becomes an image in space and it's not attached to a reference R so both is the answer that we'll need to do both and we'll need to keep improving our surveying on the ground if we're ground truing this high-tech data coming from space we want to accurately know that our survey our survey data is excellent so I think advancements in all these areas are important again you guys having a geomatics program here that's really what it's about how do we look at all of this technology together to improve our ability to understand what's happening again answer your question that that did very well of course there's always going to be more questions about what good is yes and that's science isn't it that's what science is it's inquiry good science is not answering your question but asking another so that's what we hope is that we keep have more and more questions as we go forward yes thank you so much is there anyone else you uh so switching from my previous question vertical to horizontal and so you said that the new sort of State plane systems out there you see you know in Alaska I think you mentioned I would assume in a lot of other places we have these different very localized uh horizontal coordinate systems that used often for for survey U do you see this new state plan system being able to sort of replace those very local systems or is there still going to be a need for those local systems that's the idea our idea is to replace and the really great news is that a lot of industri is working with us so our hope is speaking of the future is that embedded in your instruments that you have in the field those Transformations are done so in the future you will collect your data and it will already transferred for you into the new datam so creating all of your small local ones our hope is that's why we took a long time and building the Nationwide State plane data as we all those proposals coming in from all over the country we surveyor saying here's every single one of my local dat Michael Dennis take it and do something with it yeah so that idea was that we could make your job here in the future if we do our job well and Industry is working with us several of the big trimbles working with us some of the big manufacturers are working with inventing those transformation tools right in your instruments so it'll be seamless to the surveyor in the future we'll just be collecting great data that's our hope I have a question regarding the acorns you talk about Alaska corn stations are those going to be the lower tiers of the cor stations nationally and we going to expensify that in the future to add more because we have one a course station on the top of this F I thought we did that's right so we collaborated with Peter Flint fromr so we just instrument that partnership on the top of this building so have acorns right here right here top building collecting data right now that's I'm curious that we gonna do more acorns across the us because uh not US Alaska because we are the huge State yes we are and Peter actually I just met with Peter Flynn and other folks at DNR with everybody in our headquarters and our for branch and um with some of the contractors for acorn and they are pausing in their planning and connecting back to us the ideas that we can help them with training on how to build great stations um how to manage the data that if and John Gesa our course branch chief wants to inest all of aor into the Met course Network which means we manage the so we're also planning with the two universities in Alaska to collocate at like um seismic stations while Koo observator is like really trying to partner up so that we're improving you know everything we can together collectively so Acorn is now seated in a subcommittee Peter and I boasted on it together where we're trying to tie in acorn to the larger effort so that the coverages the gaps we need to get get into those gaps first and then the quality data is something you can depend on unique and challenging in Alaska to keep data rolling in these remote areas so we're working with all the folks the tsunami warning center everybody in Alaska that's got remote measurement stations out there to partner up with aorn so that we can do a good job so that's good news there so yes we're hoping to cover the gaps first across the whole state all the way or yeah which is great that's right here that's a local network um and that money um got earmarked and pushed in right into our Alaska DNR so it's now in state hands and we're just hoping to support and advise you guys now good stuff when data changes and a newer uh decisive uh action has changed something like the island of uh well the south island of New Zealand moved a foot closer to Australia in a recent volcano eruption and change down there uh how quickly you know does the data get picked up and then all of the different points around it get changed and hot you know whether you go right or left that's a really good question too and that's this multistation idea right so we're working with the seismologists and the the volcanologist and the people that have those International networks measuring that very change and all of that data is ingested together in continuing to update our understanding of the data because we're on AIC earth right it's changing a good example of that right here in Alaska is our national tsunami warning center in pmer Alaska there if you if You' ever had a chance if you haven't go tour it it's really neat and you it's just a little non descript building on a side street in Palmer and you go in and there's just big monitors everywhere and one of them is all the earthquake data coming in from Alaska the other is all the title data coming in from Alaska the other is all the gnis data coming in from Alaska and and all the title buoy data coming in from just offshore they that model to be able to warn you as to whether you're in an earth or tsunami warning area that we we see those all the time here in Alaska all of that data is use simultaneously 247 in their models at the suami warning center so something like that is what we would do to understand globally about how this Dynamic Earth that we're measuring on is changing so the scientists have been at this for a while thinking those kinds of same questions and so I encourage you if you want to see visually what that looks like go I'm I'm sure they allow the public to come in and tour ouram warning it's not very it's a great place and nice people smart they'll answer your questions have summer yeah um I'm gonna pause it here because we're a little over time so let's give another round to thank B I think the last thing for the online survey I think we need to give you a password which is a modernization that is a password to you for the online survey thank you so much uh you're welcome to stay here longer just to talk for additional questions you like to so much yeah thank you thank you I'm gonna grab a sandwich