In the period July 20-23, TRE installed five artificial reflectors on the Britannia Ridge landslide just north of Vancouver, not far from the Sea-to-Sky highway.
A sudden collapse of the landslide could obstruct the highway and the adjacent railroad, disrupting traffic along this important corridor. The 2010 Winter Olympics will be held in Vancouver in February and the Sea-to-Sky highway is the only viable link to Whistler, the venue of many of the major ski events.
 
The research is being funded by the Canadian Space Agency within the Earth Observation Applications Development Program (EOADP).
 
The reflectors were installed in a harsh mountain environment by Global Mountain Solutions, with extensive helicopter support. The reflectors are double geometry, meaning that they can be observed by satellites traveling in both ascending (South to North) and descending (North to South) orbits, allowing the vertical, East – West and possibly, even North – South components of the ground movement to be measured.
The measurement of movement in the North – South direction would be a groundbreaking result: until now, due to the image acquisition geometry of radar satellites, it has only been possible to estimate the vertical and East – West components of ground movement.
The reflectors are covered by a fiberglass dome (see also Figure 2), which is transparent to radar signals but keeps out snow and other debris that would decrease the efficiency of the reflector. As the area can receive up to five meters of snow the reflectors will likely become covered in the winter; the use of the domes will allow more images to be acquired in the fall, when the snow starts to accumulate, and in the spring, when it begins melting.

Figure 1: a double geometry corner reflector.

 
Figure 2: a reflector installed on Britannia Ridge.

It is hoped that it will also deter the local bears from using the reflectors as scratching posts!