FAR-ZONE CONTRIBUTIONS TO TOPOGRAPHICAL EFFECTS IN THE STOKES-HELMERT METHOD OF THE GEOID DETERMINATION

Abstract

In the evaluation of the geoid done according to the Stokes-Helmert method, the following topographical effects have to be computed: the direct topographical effect, the primary indirect topographical effect and the secondary indirect topographical effect. These effects have to be computed through integration over the surface of the earth. The integration is usually split into integration over an area immediately adjacent to the point of interest, called the near zone, and the integration over the rest of the world, called the far zone. It has been shown in the papers by Martinec and Vanicek (1994), and by Novak et al. (1999) that the far-zone contributions to the topographical effects are, even for quite extensive near zones, not negligible. Various numerical approaches can be applied to compute the far-zone contributions to topographical effects. A spectral form of solution was employed in the paper by Novak et al. (2001). In the paper by Smith (2002), the one-dimensional Fast Fourier Transform was introduced to solve the problem in the spatial domain. In this paper we use two-dimensional numerical integration. The expressions for the far-zone contributions to topographical effects on potential and on gravitational attraction are described, and numerical values encountered over the territory of Canada are shown in this paper.