1. Emergency Geomatics Service activation for Turtle Mountain, Alberta InSAR monitoring
- Author
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H Drouin, Sergey Samsonov, N Svacina, Vincent Decker, Brad Lehrbass, J Dudley, and Simon Tolszczuk-Leclerc
- Subjects
Service (business) ,geography.mountain ,geography ,business.industry ,Environmental resource management ,Interferometric synthetic aperture radar ,Geomatics ,Turtle Mountain ,business - Abstract
The Frank Slide in 1903 caused the deaths of more than 70 people, and there remains a risk of a second rock avalanche. Since then, many different methods have been used to monitor the slope for signs of movement. On April 8, 2020, the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) contacted the Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation (CCMEO) with a request for emergency assistance to monitor Turtle Mountain for deformation using interferometric synthetic aperture radar following the hardware failure of their ground-based monitoring system. This report describes at a high level the communication, planning, setup, operation, and reporting for this emergency request. Each deformation monitoring program presents a unique challenge, but this methodology can be broadly adapted to similar InSAR monitoring requests in the future. The purpose of this report is to provide a record of the services provided to help guide future geohazards monitoring requests, which may become more frequent with increased landslide risk due to climate change and greater satellite data availability. Between April 8 and June 30, 2020, 40 images were collected by RADARSAT-2 and RADARSAT Constellation Mission satellites over Turtle Mountain. These images were processed quickly after acquisition and no significant deformation was observed during the monitoring period. Historical deformation of up to 5 cm in the line-of-sight was observed between 2014 and 2020.
- Published
- 2021
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