Turtle Mountain Decommission Project, Alberta (NTS 82G): Summary Report and Historical Signs

This report summarizes the June, 2017 decommissioning of non-operational monitoring instrumentation on Turtle Mountain in the Crowsnest Pass, Alberta. It also provides information about the Alberta Energy Regulator/Alberta Geological Survey’s (AER/AGS) ownership of the Turtle Mountain Monitoring System (TMMS) and the installation of historical signs on Turtle Mountain’s South Peak, designed to educate hikers on the legacy of the TMMS from over a decade of monitoring.

The TMMS began as a near-real-time remote monitoring system that provided data from a network of sensors located on Turtle Mountain. On April 1, 2005, the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, now the AER, through the AGS, took ownership of this system and currently manages the Turtle Mountain Monitoring Program (TMMP). In July 2016, the TMMP transitioned from a near-real-time early warning system to a near-real-time remote monitoring system.

The TMMP conducts ongoing monitoring of Turtle Mountain’s unstable eastern slopes, including an annual detailed review of the TMMS data stream. To help with this interpretation, the AGS has completed specific studies to better understand the structure of the mountain and its relationship to the style and rate of movement seen in recent and historical deformations of South Peak. These studies also better define the unstable volumes of rock from the South, North and Third Peak areas.