In message 130, Mr. whatever asked:
"JonF, It looks like Hawaii is moving, but couldn't find anything
that showed where the bench marks are located on Hawaii, but
then I asked Ned to find the exact GPS bench mark data, someone
gave me tons of sites saying whatever, so likely Hawaii is
moving, the picture was great, all I was asking for was where
are the bench marks they used, how much have these established
bench marks moved(did these marks move or shift), it might be
within all your links, but if these bench marks exists, would
of thought it would of been posted, don't they use GPS on Hawaii
for land surveys, would think this would be common knowledge,
maybe the islands are shifting but not in the right direction,
etc..."
The "benchmark" used by the Western Pacific Integrated Network of GPS (WING), Pacific GPS Facility (PGF), and UNAVCO for their GPS data collection is a dedicated antenna and dome ground station at Kokee Park, Hawaii, USA (KOKB). This ground station is not a "benchmark" like the metal monuments attached to concrete pilings or metal rods planted into the ground. Rather, it is a dedicated structure used as a base stations for GPS research by NASA, USGS, various universities, and so forth. In part, it serves as a base station for USGS GPS research into predicting volcanic activity of Hawaiian volcanoes using GPS monitoring of ground movement. It is a rather expensive installation designed and built specifically not to move or shift with time and be an ultrastable location for research using satellite GPS techniques.
The locational data for the Kokee Park ground station is given in great detail in 1.
Kokee Park Geophysical Observatory along with
http://sopac.ucsd.edu/scripts/dbLocateSite.cgi?site=KOKB ;
http://sopac.ucsd.edu/processing/refinedModelDoc.html ;
2.
"Monument: BHFHC53R-13533-1999"; and 3.
http://archive.unavco.org/query/ps?sid=240
(NOTE: More about UNAVCO can be found at:
Page not found – UNAVCO )
Monument BHFHC53R-13533-1999 is the specific antenna and dome at the Kokee Park Geophysical Observatory dedicated to plate tectonic studies using GPS. A map showing the location of other GPS ground stations in the Pacific Ocean can be found at
Pacific GPS Facility (PGF).
Another system used to measure rates of plate tectonic movement is the VLBI System used by the Crustal Dynamics Project at the Kokee Park Geophysical Observatory. It is described in
Kokee Park Geophysical Observatory by Clyde A. Cox and
http://ivs.crl.go.jp/mirror/publications/ar2001/nskpgo/
" Kokee Park Geophysical Observatory is located on the Island
of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands, Kauai is the most northwestern
(inhabited) Island. The site is in a State Park (Kokee State
Park) hence its name. It is located at an elevation of 1100
meters near the Waimea Canyon, which is often referred to as
the Grand Canyon of the Pacific"
The above web pages provide all of technical specifications that the technical people need. They also provide email addresses of people, who can likely answer any questions that a person might have about the ground stations.
Bill Birkeland
™ Version 4.2
