19768 - Geology of the Sandia Mountains and Rio Grande Rift

Course Overview

The Basin and Range Province extends as a south-to-north corridor throughout central New Mexico. This corridor is a faulted landscape of uplifted mountains between down-dropped valleys and of north-south trending volcanoes. This geography is the result of the Rio Grande rift being pulled apart. Some blocks of rock like the Sandia Mountains have moved up relative to other blocks that have moved down, with a total displacement of more than 20,000 ft. Where the land is being pulled apart it also cracks so that magma ascends up the cracks to form volcanoes. The Albuquerque volcanoes and the Jemez Mountains are examples of volcanic activity along the Rio Grande Rift zone.

Explore the tectonics and volcanics of the Rio Grande Rift Zone, rocks of the Sandia Mountains/Albuquerque, Jemez and Valley of Fires and what the rocks tell about the geology and history of these regions. We'll discuss water quantity and quality of Middle Rio Grande Valley: Present and Future, the long-term water crisis and a fundamental geologic question: How do geologists know the age of rocks and the age of Planet Earth?

Our last class is a field trip to the Wastewater Treatment Plant in the South Valley