Cuts made by the Trump administration are threatening the function of a tiny but crucial office within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that maintains the US’s framework of spatial information: latitudes, longitudes, vertical measurements like elevation, and even measurements of Earth’s gravitational field.
Staff losses at the National Geodetic Survey (NGS), the oldest scientific agency in the US, could further cripple its mission and activities, including a long-awaited project to update the accuracy of these measurements, former employees and experts say. As the world turns more and more toward operations that need precise coordinate systems like the ones NGS provides, the science that underpins this office’s activities, these experts