The presentation was part of the U.S. Embassy/COM-FSM Forum Lecture Series, which provides U.S. government professionals as guest speakers for COM-FSM students, faculty, staff, and interested community members.
Since his arrival in July, Carlson has assisted the Pohnpei State Department of Land and Natural Resource in a geodetic upgrade project.
NGS is responsible for defining, managing, and providing public access to the National Spatial Reference System, a consistent national coordinate system that provides the foundation for mapping and charting; state boundaries; transportation, communication, and land records systems; and numerous scientific and engineering applications. NSRS provides an extremely accurate geographic framework throughout the United States and its possessions and Pacific islands.
The plan is to do a high accuracy geodetic leveling and GPS on the island of Pohnpei, since it has been almost 40 years since any new control was established and over the years a large number of marks have been destroyed. The last time any geodetic work was done in Pohnpei was by the USGS in 1970.
