The main aims of physical geodesy are to study the shape of the Earth, its gravity field and the geoid which is an equipotential surface closest to the mean sea level. Precise geoid determination has been an important research topic in geodesy and geophysics in the past two decades. Scientists and government agencies all around the world have made great efforts on the development of highaccuracy geoid models. These geoid models are developed not only for scientific applications, but also for other purposes such as serving for a reference surface for mapping, sea level monitoring and natural resources exploitation and management. |
