Foreward

This special issue of BGTA is dedicated to the GOCE Italy Project. This is a project of a federation of Italian research groups, supported by the Italian Space Agency, to promote results of the ESA Mission GOCE in the form of applications to Geodesy and Geophysics. The backbone of the project is the group of Politecnico di Milano (PoliMi), which is also strongly engaged into the ESA HPF structure, with the job of the so called space-wise estimation of a GOCE only gravity field. With geodetic applications in mind, PoliMi has proposed to study the optimal combination of GOCE gravity information with an existing high resolution global gravity field, namely EGM08; furthermore PoliMi has been engaged in the study of an enhanced estimation of the geoid in local areas, to fully exploit local GOCE data, at satellite level, and ground data in critical areas where ground gravity material is scarce and uneven, e.g. the Alpine area. In addition GOCE Italy has the target of studying applications of the GOCE derived products to solid Earth geophysics, and to marine geodesy, with particular regard to the Mediterranean area. In more detail the University of Milan group was to study the identification of gravity signals due to large earthquakes and/or to evaluate the impact of GOCE crustal models in the analysis of seismogenesis. The O.G.S. group had to work to the mapping of the dynamic height in the Mediterranean for the purpose of mapping geostrophic currents in that sea. Moreover the university of Padua was in charge of studying existing tidal models with a twofold objective; to find the best model suited to perform tidal corrections to the orbit tracking of GOCE and on the same time to identify to what extent GOCE, with its very low orbit, could help in studying tidal dynamics. Moreover the University of Trieste was put to study the geological modelling of the crust, with a particular interest for unsurveyed areas like in Africa and South America. In addition an industrial component, Galileian Plus, was appointed to manage the whole project, while another one, Altec, was in charge of building a useful interface to the users, in the form of a toolbox. After three years of work I can say that most of our tasks have been accomplished as demonstrated by the attached list of publications. In the volume though, some of the most prominent results achieved are highlighted and presented in detail. Finally, on behalf of all the GOCE Italy groups, I would like to thank the Italian Space Agency for supporting the project and in particular dr Giuseppe Bianco for the friendly and stimulating discussions in the many meetings which have constellated the path of our research.