Physical Geodesy
Specific interests ...
Gravimetric Geoids
I have been involved in numerous gravimetric geoid computation projects, mainly over continental Australia
(Featherstone et al., 2001) in the AUSGeoid98 project. However, I also used Hotine's (as opposed to
the more commonly-used Stokes's) integral on GPS-coordinated gravity data, to control the geoid gradient over Western Australia's Darling Fault,
which has one of the highest geoid gradients in the world (Kirby, 2003). In my PhD research, I used an FFT
approximation to Stokes's integral, on map-projected data, to compute the North Atlatic geoid (Kirby, 1996).
Other geoid-related research includes a method to reduce spatial aliasing when interpolating free-air gravity anomaly data
(Featherstone & Kirby, 2000), the combination of satellite altimetry and shipboard gravity
measurements (Kirby, 1996; Kirby, 1997), and the use of vector gravity
anomalies for exploration (Featherstone et al., 2000).
Gravimetric Terrain Corrections
Digital elevation models (DEMs) now cover most of the Earth's surface, lending themselves to the determination of terrain corrections to gravity
data, whether for geodetic or geophysical purposes. My software implements the method of Li and Sideris (1994, GJI vol 119) in the planar approximation.
We computed the Australian terrain corrections from the 9 arcsecond Geoscience Australia DEM
(Kirby and Featherstone, 1999), and I have also done some computations with the SRTM 3 arcsecond data over
Australia.
CRICOS provider code 00301J