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Trump Cuts Are Killing a Tiny Office That Keeps Measurements of the World Accurate
A tiny but crucial agency that maintains physical coordinates like latitude and longitude in the US is struggling as the Trump administration forces out federal employees.
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. This includes not only latitude and longitude, but also measurements of depth and height as well as calculations around Earth’s gravitational field—crucial mathematics that inform much of the basic infrastructure around us, from constructing bridges to mapping out water and electric lines. For everyday navigation, exact locations aren’t truly necessary—but for a variety of activities, from mapping floodplains to building bridges to measuring sea level rise, every centimeter becomes crucial.
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