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Albuquerque Basin

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The Albuquerque Basin is one of the largest (8,000 km2, 3,060 mi2) and deepest basins (4,407-6,592 m, 14,500-21,600 ft) of the Rio Grande rift. This basin contains the largest metropolitan area in New Mexico. Until 2008, this region relied entirely on groundwater for its water supply. This sole reliance on groundwater resulted from an earlier view that Albuquerque lay on top of the subterranean equivalent of a vast underground lake that would take centuries to exploit. Since the 1960s, the City of Albuquerque had little reason to be concerned about its water supply because wells drilled in the northeast and southeast heights yielded large quantities of potable groundwater. The view of plentiful groundwater was essentially unchallenged until the late 1980s, when water level declines near Coronado Center provoked exploration of the deeper aquifer. Results of the deep aquifer test wells led to reassessment of the regional aquifer and the Middle Rio Grande Basin Project of the late 1990s.

Starting in 1992, the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources began examining the geology and hydrogeology of the Albuquerque area using a multidisciplinary and synthesis-oriented approach that became the foundation of the bureau’s Aquifer Mapping Program. The bureau’s approach to investigating groundwater basins is multi-fold and can integrates surface-geologic mapping, regional surface- and airborne-geophysical surveys, and geologic study of available well data, including municipal and domestic water-supply wells, ground water monitoring wells, and commercial oil and gas wells. This synthesis-based approach to the study of basin hydrology substantially improved our technical understanding of the geology of water-bearing rocks and sediments.

Important findings of this work include: the geologic structure and geometry of the basin profoundly impacts the location and quality, age, and yield of aquifer zones in the basin. The path of the ancestral Rio Grande, which is one of the best sources of groundwater is now well understood.

In the wake of the Middle Rio Grande Basin Project, nearly 80% of the basin surface has been geologically mapped at a scale of 1:24,000 (1 inch equals 2000 feet), and over 300 wells have been examined to some degree. Geologic compilations of the Albuquerque–Rio Rancho metropolitan area, Isleta Pueblo and Los Lunas area, and the northern end of the basin were published between 2006 and 2008. The cost of this multi-disciplinary, interagency aquifer mapping effort has been relatively inexpensive; less than $40 per person residing in the basin. With less than 10% of the subsurface geology and hydrology sampled in the basin, and about one-fifth of the basin surface remaining to be mapped in detail, much work remains to be done before a truly comprehensive model of the Albuquerque Basin can be completed.

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Partially Annotated List of AMP-Relevant Publications

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Open-File and Contract Reports (Excluding Guidebooks released as Open-file Reports)

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Revised: 11 February, 2013

© 2007 - 2008 NMBGMR
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Copyright © 2007 - 2008 New Mexico Bureau of Geology & Mineral Resources unless otherwise specified.