History of the Project
Prior to the announcement of the present Turtle Mountain Monitoring Project there has been a long history of monitoring what was happening on Turtle Mountain, almost since the time of the intial rock slide in 1903. Earlier monitoring programs may be summarized as:
- Reference mounds beside prominant fissures on the mountain were established (1903) very soon after the slide by the mine engineers.
- Survey monuments (1912, 1934)
- Crack gauge stations to be manually measured were installed (1933) by Dr. John Allan of the Alberta Research Council (Alberta Geological Survey).
- Tape extensometer measuring point arrays (1980) installed by Dr. D. M. Cruden of the University of Alberta
- Moiré crack motion detection gauges (1980) installed by the University of Alberta in collaboration with Dr. B. Kostak of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.
- Weather station with two attached crackmeters (1984-1995) operated by Alberta Environment
- Seismic monitoring stations (1983-1994) operated by Alberta Environment
- Laser ranging measurement prisms (1983) operated by Alberta Environment
- Photogrammetry targets (1985) operated by Alberta Environment
The present project updates and modernizes some of the components comprising more recent monitoring programs as well as adding newer more high tech systems.
