Earth Sciences Report 2007-09

Author(s) Date 2008-07-31

Frank Slide is a catastrophic rock avalanche that took place in 1903 on the eastern slope of Turtle Mountain located in the south western Alberta, Canada. It buried a portion of Town of Frank and claimed more than 70 casualties. Thirty years later, studies of the remaining portions of the mountain documented another potential rockslide hazard that was estimated to involve a failure of 5 million m3 of rock in the area known as South Peak. The present study has applied Persistent/permanent Scatterers Interferometry SAR technology to map ground deformation in the Frank Slide area using Radarsat-1 data and EarthView InSAR Coherent Target Monitoring software developed by Atlantis Scientific Inc . The report includes results on the success of the application of spaceborne InSAR to map ground deformation over the Frank Slide area, using Radarsat-1 data acquired with Fine Beam 4 of the ascending pass from April 2004 to October 2006.

NTS Keywords

Mei, S., Poncos, V. and Froese, C.R. (2008): Mapping millimetre-scale ground deformation over the Frank Slide and South Peak of Turtle Mountain, Alberta, using spaceborne InSAR technology; Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, EUB/AGS Earth Sciences Report 2007-09, 126 p.