The SCAR GIANT programme is reponsible to establish and maintain a high precision geodetic infrastructure for Antarctica. It operates a range of geodesy projects. Details on these can be found in the current GIANT work programme.

There has been considerable international cooperation in Antarctic Geodesy since SCAR was formed in 1958. The Geodetic Infrastructure for Antarctica (GIANT) program was identified in the SCAR 1992 meeting and has evolved as the coordinating program for all SCAR Antarctic geodesy.

Antarctica is important in the context of global geodesy. In the past global models have heavily relied on observations from Northern Hemisphere sites and the results do not always fit in the Southern Hemisphere or represent the best global picture. Antarctic space geodetic observatories have provided data to rectify this imbalance.

With advent of man made satellites Geodesy has advanced significantly linking isolated geodetic networks and monitoring tectonic motion. A number of permanent GPS receivers have been installed in Antarctica and data is increasingly being retrieved by satellite transmission from these sites.

This fiducial network of GPS points, augmented by VLBI and other techniques, forms the basis for an integrated geodetic infrastructure as the basis for all scientific spatial data. Data from these sites in Antarctica are of ongoing importance to global geodesy, especially in the determinations of precise orbits and the integration of different observational techniques. These sites provide a stable platform for combining summer epoch campaigns, densifying the ITRF network across Antarctica.

Some continuous GPS sites make their data available to the International GPS Service (IGS) using satellite data retrieval systems. Data from continuous GPS sites in Antarctica were used in ITRF 2000 primary determinations (Altimimi 2001) and the epoch surveys have also been processed by Dietrich (2001) as densification of the global reference frame. This results in a network of official published IERS coordinates (with velocities) for Antarctic rock sites which can be used by any scientists in the Global reference frame.

source: Manning, J. (2005): The Evolution of the GIANT program, SCAR Report 23, p.1-7, modified

Details on the ongoing GIANT activities can be found on the GIANT website.

The ITRF website allows to extract positions and velocities from an ITRF solution at any epoch for the Antarctic sites included in ITRF2000.

The online SCAR Epoch Crustal Movements Database allows to access the data from all GPS stations that have participated in SCAR Epoch campaigns.

Details on local gedodetic networks in Antarctic may be found on the GIANT website and in the reports of the regularly held Antarctic Geodesy Symposia. These reports are generally published as SCAR Reports.