Effect of the SRTM global DEM on the determination of a high-resolution geoid model: a case study in Iran

Any errors in digital elevation models (DEMs) will introduce errors directly in gravity anomalies and geoid models when used in interpolating Bouguer gravity anomalies. Errors are also propagated into the geoid model by the topographic and downward continuation (DWC) corrections in the application of Stokes’s formula. The effects of these errors are assessed by the evaluation of the absolute accuracy of nine independent DEMs for the Iran region. It is shown that the improvement in using the high-resolution Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data versus previously available DEMs in gridding of gravity anomalies, terrain corrections and DWC effects for the geoid model are significant. Based on the Iranian GPS/levelling network data, we estimate the absolute vertical accuracy of the SRTM in Iran to be 6.5 m, which is much better than the estimated global accuracy of the SRTM (say 16 m). Hence, this DEM has a comparable accuracy to a current photogrammetric high-resolution DEM of Iran under development. We also found very large differences between the GLOBE and SRTM models on the range of −750 to 550 m. This difference causes an error in the range of −160 to 140 mGal in interpolating surface gravity anomalies and −60 to 60 mGal in simple Bouguer anomaly correction terms. In the view of geoid heights, we found large differences between the use of GLOBE and SRTM DEMs, in the range of −1.1 to 1 m for the study area. The terrain correction of the geoid model at selected GPS/levelling points only differs by 3 cm for these two DEMs.     

Local geoid determination combining gravity disturbances and GPS/levelling: a case study in the Lake Nasser area, Aswan, Egypt

 The use of GPS for height control in an area with existing levelling data requires the determination of a local geoid and the bias between the local levelling datum and the one implicitly defined when computing the local geoid. If only scarse gravity data are available, the heights of new data may be collected rapidly by determining the ellipsoidal height by GPS and not using orthometric heights. Hence the geoid determination has to be based on gravity disturbances contingently combined with gravity anomalies. Furthermore, existing GPS/levelling data may also be used in the geoid determination if a suitable general gravity field modelling method (such as least-squares collocation, LSC) is applied. A comparison has been made in the Aswan Dam area between geoids determined using fast Fourier transform (FFT) with gravity disturbances exclusively and LSC using only the gravity disturbances and the disturbances combined with GPS/levelling data. The EGM96 spherical harmonic model was in all cases used in a remove–restore mode. A total of 198 gravity disturbances spaced approximately 3 km apart were used, as well as 35 GPS/levelling points in the vicinity and on the Aswan Dam. No data on the Nasser Lake were available. This gave difficulties when using FFT, which requires the use of gridded data. When using exclusively the gravity disturbances, the agreement between the GPS/levelling data were 0.71 ± 0.17 m for FFT and 0.63 ± 0.15 for LSC. When combining gravity disturbances and GPS/levelling, the LSC error estimate was ±0.10 m. In the latter case two bias parameters had to be introduced to account for a possible levelling datum difference between the levelling on the dam and that on the adjacent roads. Received: 14 August 2000 / Accepted: 28 February 2001     

The topographic bias by analytical continuation in physical geodesy

This study emphasizes that the harmonic downward continuation of an external representation of the Earth’s gravity potential to sea level through the topographic masses implies a topographic bias. It is shown that the bias is only dependent on the topographic density along the geocentric radius at the computation point. The bias corresponds to the combined topographic geoid effect, i.e., the sum of the direct and indirect topographic effects. For a laterally variable topographic density function, the combined geoid effect is proportional to terms of powers two and three of the topographic height, while all higher order terms vanish. The result is useful in geoid determination by analytical continuation, e.g., from an Earth gravity model, Stokes’s formula or a combination thereof.     

The effect of topography on the determination of the geoid using analytical downward continuation

The method of analytical downward continuation has been used for solving Molodensky’s problem. This method can also be used to reduce the surface free air anomaly to the ellipsoid for the determination of the coefficients of the spherical harmonic expansion of the geopotential. In the reduction of airborne or satellite gradiometry data, if the sea level is chosen as reference surface, we will encounter the problem of the analytical downward continuation of the disturbing potential into the earth, too. The goal of this paper is to find out the topographic effect of solving Stoke’sboundary value problem (determination of the geoid) by using the method of analytical downward continuation. It is shown that the disturbing potential obtained by using the analytical downward continuation is different from the true disturbing potential on the sea level mostly by a −2πGρh 2/p. This correction is important and it is very easy to compute and add to the final results. A terrain effect (effect of the topography from the Bouguer plate) is found to be much smaller than the correction of the Bouguer plate and can be neglected in most cases. It is also shown that the geoid determined by using the Helmert’s second condensation (including the indirect effect) and using the analytical downward continuation procedure (including the topographic effect) are identical. They are different procedures and may be used in different environments, e.g., the analytical downward continuation procedure is also more convenient for processing the aerial gravity gradient data. A numerical test was completed in a rough mountain area, 35°<ϕ<38°, 240°<λ<243°. A digital height model in 30″×30″ point value was used. The test indicated that the terrain effect in the test area has theRMS value ±0.2−0.3 cm for geoid. The topographic effect on the deflections of the vertical is around1 arc second.     

利用空中平均重力异常确定区域大地水准面

提出了直接利用空中平均重力异常计算区域大地水准面的方法。模拟计算的结果表明, 该方法与传统的利用地面平均空间重力异常确定的大地水准面精度相当, 但其显著优点是勿需空中重力异常的向下解析延拓, 从而可以避免延拓误差对大地水准面精化的影响。     

Downward continuation and geoid determination based on band-limited airborne gravity data

 The downward continuation of the harmonic disturbing gravity potential, derived at flight level from discrete observations of airborne gravity by the spherical Hotine integral, to the geoid is discussed. The initial-boundary-value approach, based on both the direct and inverse solution to Dirichlet's problem of potential theory, is used. Evaluation of the discretized Fredholm integral equation of the first kind and its inverse is numerically tested using synthetic airborne gravity data. Characteristics of the synthetic gravity data correspond to typical airborne data used for geoid determination today and in the foreseeable future: discrete gravity observations at a mean flight height of 2 to 6 km above mean sea level with minimum spatial resolution of 2.5 arcmin and a noise level of 1.5 mGal. Numerical results for both approaches are presented and discussed. The direct approach can successfully be used for the downward continuation of airborne potential without any numerical instabilities associated with the inverse approach. In addition to these two-step approaches, a one-step procedure is also discussed. This procedure is based on a direct relationship between gravity disturbances at flight level and the disturbing gravity potential at sea level. This procedure provided the best results in terms of accuracy, stability and numerical efficiency. As a general result, numerically stable downward continuation of airborne gravity data can be seen as another advantage of airborne gravimetry in the field of geoid determination. Received: 6 June 2001 / Accepted: 3 January 2002     

The combination of GNSS-levelling data and gravimetric (quasi-) geoid heights in the presence of noise

We propose a methodology for the combination of a gravimetric (quasi-) geoid with GNSS-levelling data in the presence of noise with correlations and/or spatially varying noise variances. It comprises two steps: first, a gravimetric (quasi-) geoid is computed using the available gravity data, which, in a second step, is improved using ellipsoidal heights at benchmarks provided by GNSS once they have become available. The methodology is an alternative to the integrated processing of all available data using least-squares techniques or least-squares collocation. Unlike the corrector-surface approach, the pursued approach guarantees that the corrections applied to the gravimetric (quasi-) geoid are consistent with the gravity anomaly data set. The methodology is applied to a data set comprising 109 gravimetric quasi-geoid heights, ellipsoidal heights and normal heights at benchmarks in Switzerland. Each data set is complemented by a full noise covariance matrix. We show that when neglecting noise correlations and/or spatially varying noise variances, errors up to 10% of the differences between geometric and gravimetric quasi-geoid heights are introduced. This suggests that if high-quality ellipsoidal heights at benchmarks are available and are used to compute an improved (quasi-) geoid, noise covariance matrices referring to the same datum should be used in the data processing whenever they are available. We compare the methodology with the corrector-surface approach using various corrector surface models. We show that the commonly used corrector surfaces fail to model the more complicated spatial patterns of differences between geometric and gravimetric quasi-geoid heights present in the data set. More flexible parametric models such as radial basis function approximations or minimum-curvature harmonic splines perform better. We also compare the proposed method with generalized least-squares collocation, which comprises a deterministic trend model, a random signal component and a random correlated noise component. Trend model parameters and signal covariance function parameters are estimated iteratively from the data using non-linear least-squares techniques. We show that the performance of generalized least-squares collocation is better than the performance of corrector surfaces, but the differences with respect to the proposed method are still significant.     

Far-zone effects for different topographic-compensation models based on a spherical harmonic expansion of the topography

The determination of the gravimetric geoid is based on the magnitude of gravity observed at the surface of the Earth or at airborne altitude. To apply the Stokes’s or Hotine’s formulae at the geoid, the potential outside the geoid must be harmonic and the observed gravity must be reduced to the geoid. For this reason, the topographic (and atmospheric) masses outside the geoid must be “condensed” or “shifted” inside the geoid so that the disturbing gravity potential T fulfills Laplace’s equation everywhere outside the geoid. The gravitational effects of the topographic-compensation masses can also be used to subtract these high-frequent gravity signals from the airborne observations and to simplify the downward continuation procedures. The effects of the topographic-compensation masses can be calculated by numerical integration based on a digital terrain model or by representing the topographic masses by a spherical harmonic expansion. To reduce the computation time in the former case, the integration over the Earth can be divided into two parts: a spherical cap around the computation point, called the near zone, and the rest of the world, called the far zone. The latter one can be also represented by a global spherical harmonic expansion. This can be performed by a Molodenskii-type spectral approach. This article extends the original approach derived in Novák et al. (J Geod 75(9–10):491–504, 2001), which is restricted to determine the far-zone effects for Helmert’s second method of condensation for ground gravimetry. Here formulae for the far-zone effects of the global topography on gravity and geoidal heights for Helmert’s first method of condensation as well as for the Airy-Heiskanen model are presented and some improvements given. Furthermore, this approach is generalized for determining the far-zone effects at aeroplane altitudes. Numerical results for a part of the Canadian Rocky Mountains are presented to illustrate the size and distributions of these effects.     

GPS-gravimetric geoid determination in Egypt

The main objective of this study is to improve the geoid by GPS/leveling data in Egypt. Comparisons of the gravimetric geoid with GPS/leveling data have been performed. On the basis of a gravimetric geoid fitted to GPS/leveling by the least square method, a smoothed geoid was obtained. A high-resolution geoid in Egypt was computed with a 2.5′×2.5′ grid by combining the data set of 2600 original point gravity values, 20″×30″ resolution Digital Terrain Model (DTM) grid and the spherical harmonic model EGM96. The method of computation involved the strict evaluation of the Stokes integral with 1D-FFT. The standard deviation of the difference between the gravimetric and the GPS/leveling geoid heights is ±0.47 m. The standard deviation after fitting of the gravimetric geoid to the GPS/leveling points is better than ±13 cm. In the future we will try to improve our geoid results in Egypt by increasing the density of gravimetric coverage.     

The effect on the geoid of lateral topographic density variations

Gravimetric geoid determination by Stokes formula requires that the effects of topographic masses be removed prior to Stokes integration. This step includes the direct topographic and the downward continuation (DWC) effects on gravity anomaly, and the computations yield the co-geoid height. By adding the effect of restoration of the topography, the indirect effect on the geoid, the geoid height is obtained. Unfortunately, the computations of all these topographic effects are hampered by the uncertainty of the density distribution of the topography. Usually the computations are limited to a constant topographic density, but recently the effects of lateral density variations have been studied for their direct and indirect effects on the geoid. It is emphasised that the DWC effect might also be significantly affected by a lateral density variation. However, instead of computing separate effects of lateral density variation for direct, DWC and indirect effects, it is shown in two independent ways that the total geoid effect due to the lateral density anomaly can be represented as a simple correction proportional to the lateral density anomaly and the elevation squared of the computation point. This simple formula stems from the fact that the significant long-wavelength contributions to the various topographic effects cancel in their sum. Assuming that the lateral density anomaly is within 20% of the standard topographic density, the derived formula implies that the total effect on the geoid is significant at the centimetre level for topographic elevations above 0.66 km. For elevations of 1000, 2000 and 5000 m the effect is within ± 2.2, ± 8.8 and ± 56.8 cm, respectively. For the elevation of Mt. Everest the effect is within ± 1.78 m.     

GPS-GRAVIMETRIC GEOID DETERMINATION IN EGYPT

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最小二乘配置法中局部协方差函数的计算

随着 GPS日益广泛的应用及精度的不断提高 ,在有些实际应用中利用 GPS来代替传统的水准测量进行高程控制已成为可能 ,这也进一步提出了对高精度大地水准面的需求。快速傅立叶变换 (FFT)是目前计算大地水准面比较常用的方法之一 ,但需要将重力观测量进行内插得到规则格网上的平均重力异常。利用最小二乘配置法计算大地水准面可直接利用已有的观测值进行计算 ,同时可综合利用不同类型的数据 ,如重力异常和垂线偏差等计算大地水准面 ,因此最小二乘配置法仍有广泛的应用 ,但制约最小二乘配置应用的关键问题是局部协方差函数的计算。将主要讨论最小二乘配置法中局部协方差函数的计算 ,使所用的协方差函数能更好地反映已知的数据 ,从而获得更精确的结果。     

The Geoid Slope Validation Survey 2014 and GRAV-D airborne gravity enhanced geoid comparison results in Iowa

Three Geoid Slope Validation Surveys were planned by the National Geodetic Survey for validating geoid improvement gained by incorporating airborne gravity data collected by the “Gravity for the Redefinition of the American Vertical Datum” (GRAV-D) project in flat, medium and rough topographic areas, respectively. The first survey GSVS11 over a flat topographic area in Texas confirmed that a 1-cm differential accuracy geoid over baseline lengths between 0.4 and 320 km is achievable with GRAV-D data included (Smith et al. in J Geod 87:885–907, 2013). The second survey, Geoid Slope Validation Survey 2014 (GSVS14) took place in Iowa in an area with moderate topography but significant gravity variation. Two sets of geoidal heights were computed from GPS/leveling data and observed astrogeodetic deflections of the vertical at 204 GSVS14 official marks. They agree with each other at a \({\pm }1.2\,\, \hbox {cm}\) level, which attests to the high quality of the GSVS14 data. In total, four geoid models were computed. Three models combined the GOCO03/5S satellite gravity model with terrestrial and GRAV-D gravity with different strategies. The fourth model, called xGEOID15A, had no airborne gravity data and served as the benchmark to quantify the contribution of GRAV-D to the geoid improvement. The comparisons show that each model agrees with the GPS/leveling geoid height by 1.5 cm in mark-by-mark comparisons. In differential comparisons, all geoid models have a predicted accuracy of 1–2 cm at baseline lengths from 1.6 to 247 km. The contribution of GRAV-D is not apparent due to a 9-cm slope in the western 50-km section of the traverse for all gravimetric geoid models, and it was determined that the slopes have been caused by a 5 mGal bias in the terrestrial gravity data. If that western 50-km section of the testing line is excluded in the comparisons, then the improvement with GRAV-D is clearly evident. In that case, 1-cm differential accuracy on baselines of any length is achieved with the GRAV-D-enhanced geoid models and exhibits a clear improvement over the geoid models without GRAV-D data. GSVS14 confirmed that the geoid differential accuracies are in the 1–2 cm range at various baseline lengths. The accuracy increases to 1 cm with GRAV-D gravity when the west 50 km line is not included. The data collected by the surveys have high accuracy and have the potential to be used for validation of other geodetic techniques, e.g., the chronometric leveling. To reach the 1-cm height differences of the GSVS data, a clock with frequency accuracy of \(10^{-18}\) is required. Using the GSVS data, the accuracy of ellipsoidal height differences can also be estimated.     

Applications of downward-continuation in gravimetric geoid modeling: case studies in Western Canada

The objective of this study is to evaluate two approaches, which use different representations of the Earth’s gravity field for downward continuation (DC), for determining Helmert gravity anomalies on the geoid. The accuracy of these anomalies is validated by 1) analyzing conformity of the two approaches; and 2) converting them to geoid heights and comparing the resulting values to GPS-leveling data. The first approach (A) consists of evaluating Helmert anomalies at the topography and downward-continuing them to the geoid. The second approach (B) downward-continues refined Bouguer anomalies to the geoid and transforms them to Helmert anomalies by adding the condensed topographical effect. Approach A is sensitive to the DC because of the roughness of the Helmert gravity field. The DC effect on the geoid can reach up to 2 m in Western Canada when the Stokes kernel is used to convert gravity anomalies to geoid heights. Furthermore, Poisson’s equation for DC provides better numerical results than Moritz’s equation when the resulting geoid models are validated against the GPS-leveling. On the contrary, approach B is significantly less sensitive to the DC because of the smoothness of the refined Bouguer gravity field. In this case, the DC (Poisson’s and Moritz’s) contributes only at the decimeter level to the geoid model in Western Canada. The maximum difference between the geoid models from approaches A and B is about 5 cm in the region of interest. The differences may result from errors in the DC such as numerical instability. The standard deviations of the h−H−N for both approaches are about 8 cm at the 664 GPS-leveling validation stations in Western Canada.     

配置法在局部大地水准面精化中的实例研究

从最小二乘配置方法的基本原理出发,以我国某地区范围内1km分辨率的大地水准面高模型数据为例,根据实用公式计算了试验区大地水准面高的协方差值后,采用多项式函数模型和高斯函数模型分别拟合了该地区大地水准面高的局部协方差函数,并对试验区内18个检核点做了推估计算。根据推估值(Nfit)与实测值(NGPSL)的比较分析表明,虽然多项式协方差函数模型略优于高斯协方差函数模型,但它们都能以厘米级的精度拟合局部大地水准面,这表明了配置法用于精化厘米级大地水准面的有效性。     

The Effects of Stokes’s Formula for an Ellipsoidal Layering of the Earth’s Atmosphere

The application of Stokes’s formula to determine the geoid height requires that topographic and atmospheric masses be mathematically removed prior to Stokes integration. This corresponds to the applications of the direct topographic and atmospheric effects. For a proper geoid determination, the external masses must then be restored, yielding the indirect effects. Assuming an ellipsoidal layering of the atmosphere with 15% increase in its density towards the poles, the direct atmospheric effect on the geoid height is estimated to be −5.51 m plus a second-degree zonal harmonic term with an amplitude of 1.1 cm. The indirect effect is +5.50 m and the total geoid correction thus varies between −1.2 cm at the equator to 1.9 cm at the poles. Finally, the correction needed to the atmospheric effect if Stokes’s formula is used in a spherical approximation, rather than an ellipsoidal approximation, of the Earth varies between 0.3 cm and 4.0 cm at the equator and pole, respectively.     

顾及地形效应的重力向下延拓模型分析与检验

向下延拓是航空重力测量数据实际应用中必不可少的技术环节。向下延拓属于不适定反问题,其解算过程具有较大的不确定性,故该问题一直是大地测量领域国内外学者的研究热点。本文深入分析研究了当前国内外最具代表性的3种向下延拓计算模型的技术特点和适用条件,提出了应用超高阶位模型、局部地形改正和移去—恢复技术顾及地形效应,以及位场延拓结果球面化曲面的工程化方法,重点探讨了计算模型的稳定性及数据观测误差对延拓计算结果的影响。通过理论分析、数值仿真和实测数据计算等手段,定量评估了不同向下延拓模型的解算精度及其可靠性。其主要结论是:传统逆Poisson积分模型解严重受制于输入数据观测噪声的干扰,在现有作业条件下,该模型至多只能用于1km以下高度的延拓解算;频谱截断积分和位模型加地改两种延拓新模型具有良好的计算稳定性,完全适用于2′分辨率和5km飞行高度条件下的航空重力测量数据向下延拓解算,其延拓计算精度可达2×10~(-5) m/s~2,可满足各方面实际应用需求。     

The ellipsoidal corrections to the topographic geoid effects

The topographic effects by Stokes formula are typically considered for a spherical approximation of sea level. For more precise determination of the geoid, sea level is better approximated by an ellipsoid, which justifies the consideration of the ellipsoidal corrections of topographic effects for improved geoid solutions. The aim of this study is to estimate the ellipsoidal effects of the combined topographic correction (direct plus indirect topographic effects) and the downward continuation effect. It is concluded that the ellipsoidal correction to the combined topographic effect on the geoid height is far less than 1 mm. On the contrary, the ellipsoidal correction to the effect of downward continuation of gravity anomaly to sea level may be significant at the 1-cm level in mountainous regions. Nevertheless, if Stokes formula is modified and the integration of gravity anomalies is limited to a cap of a few degrees radius around the computation point, nor this effect is likely to be significant.AcknowledgementsThe author is grateful for constructive remarks by J Ågren and the three reviewers.     

Comparisons of spectral techniques for geoid computations over large regions

The Stokes formula is efficiently evaluated by the one-and two- dimensional (1D, 2D) fast Fourier transform (FFT) technique in the plane and on the sphere in order to obtain precise geoid determinatiover a large area such as Europe. Using a high-pass filtered spherical harmonic reference model (OSU91A truncated to different degrees), gridded gravity anomalies and geoid heights were produced and the anomalies were used as input in the FFT software. Various tests were performed with respect to the different kernel functions used, to the spherical computations in bands, as well as to windowing, edge effects and extent of the area. It is thus demonstrated that, in geoid computations over large regions, the 1D spherical FFT and the 2D multiband spherical FFT in combination with discrete spectra for the kernel functions and 100% zero-padding give better results than those obtained by the other transform techniques. Additionally, numerical tests were carried out at the same test area using the planar fast Hartley transform (FHT) instead of the FFT and the results obtained by the two attractive alternatives were compared regarding the requirements in both computer time and computer memory needed in geoid height computations.A slightly modified version of the paper has been presented at the XX EGS General Assembly, Hamburg, 3–7 April, 1995     

On the spherical and spheroidal harmonic expansion of the gravitational potential of the topographic masses

This paper is devoted to the spherical and spheroidal harmonic expansion of the gravitational potential of the topographic masses in the most rigorous way. Such an expansion can be used to compute gravimetric topographic effects for geodetic and geophysical applications. It can also be used to augment a global gravity model to a much higher resolution of the gravitational potential of the topography. A formulation for a spherical harmonic expansion is developed without the spherical approximation. Then, formulas for the spheroidal harmonic expansion are derived. For the latter, Legendre’s functions of the first and second kinds with imaginary variable are expanded in Laurent series. They are then scaled into two real power series of the second eccentricity of the reference ellipsoid. Using these series, formulas for computing the spheroidal harmonic coefficients are reduced to surface harmonic analysis. Two numerical examples are presented. The first is a spherical harmonic expansion to degree and order 2700 by taking advantage of existing software. It demonstrates that rigorous spherical harmonic expansion is possible, but the computed potential on the geoid shows noticeable error pattern at Polar Regions due to the downward continuation from the bounding sphere to the geoid. The second numerical example is the spheroidal expansion to degree and order 180 for the exterior space. The power series of the second eccentricity of the reference ellipsoid is truncated at the eighth order leading to omission errors of 25 nm (RMS) for land areas, with extreme values around 0.5 mm to geoid height. The results show that the ellipsoidal correction is 1.65 m (RMS) over land areas, with maximum value of 13.19 m in the Andes. It shows also that the correction resembles the topography closely, implying that the ellipsoidal correction is rich in all frequencies of the gravity field and not only long wavelength as it is commonly assumed.