The United States is replacing every official latitude, longitude and height it publishes, existing coordinates will move by as much as four meters, and the million survey marks in the ground will no

Key Points:

• The National Geodetic Survey (NGS) is replacing the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD 83) and the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88) with four new terrestrial reference frames and one new geopotential datum, causing official coordinates in the U.S. to shift by up to four meters without any physical movement of the land.
• The updated system corrects systematic errors in the old datums, including a horizontal misalignment of about 2.2 meters between NAD 83 and the Earth’s center, and vertical biases and tilts in NAVD 88 of up to two meters, by incorporating modern satellite data and a new gravity-based geoid model called GEOID2022.
• The new horizontal reference frames correspond to four tectonic plates (North American, Pacific, Caribbean, Mariana) and will account for plate motions, while vertical measurements will rely on the North American-Pacific Geopotential Datum of 2022, replacing all previous vertical datums.
• The modernization shifts geodetic control from physical survey marks, many of which are deteriorated, to satellite-based systems accessed through NOAA networks and the International GNSS Service, with published positions including an epoch date to reflect continental movement.
• The rollout timeline has been delayed from an initial 2022-2025 window to 2025-2026, with official adoption pending a Federal Geodetic Control Subcommittee vote; meanwhile, geodetic projects must submit data under the old system by January 13, 2027, after which the new system will become mandatory for federal and many state agencies.