Temporal Change
In geodesy, temporal change can be studied by a variety of techniques. Points on the Earth's surface change their location due to a variety of mechanisms:
- Continental plate motion, plate tectonics
- Episodic motion of tectonic origin, esp. close to fault lines
- Periodic effects due to Earth tides
- Postglacial land uplift due to isostatic adjustment
- Various anthropogenic movements due to, for instance, petroleum or water extraction or reservoir construction.
The science of studying deformations and motions of the Earth's crust and the solid Earth as a whole is called geodynamics. Often, study of the Earth's irregular rotation is also included in its definition.
Techniques for studying geodynamic phenomena on the global scale include:
- satellite positioning by GPS and other such systems,
- Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI)
- satellite and lunar laser ranging
- Regionally and locally, precise levelling,
- precise tacheometers,
- monitoring of gravity change,
- Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) using satellite images, etc.
Read more about this topic: Geodesy
Famous quotes containing the words temporal and/or change:
“Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this—as in other ways—they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)