GEOLOGY OF ISLETA RESERVATION, CENTRAL NEW MEXICO
D.W. LOVE, S.D. CONNELL, New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources, 801 Leroy Place, Socorro, NM 87801
J.L. SLATE, U.S. Geol. Survey, MS 913, Box 25046, Denver CO 80225
K.E. KARLSTROM, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131-1116
The Isleta Reservation is located south of Albuquerque, New Mexico and
extends from the Rio Puerco eastward to the Manzano and Manzanita Mountains.
The study area comprises twelve 7.5-minute quadrangles that have been
mapped at 1:24,000 scale and compiled at 1:50,000 scale. Pre-Santa Fe
Group rocks include Proterozoic metamorphic and plutonic rocks, upper
Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Paleogene strata. The late Paleogene-Neogene
Santa Fe Group is divided into a lower unit, The Popotosa Formation, and
upper unit. The upper Santa Fe Group is divided into three major facies:
western-basin fluvial lithofacies containing deposits of the Ancestral
Rio Puerco; central-basin fluvial lithofacies containing deposits of the
ancestral Rio Grande axial-fluvial system; and eastern-basin piedmont
lithofacies derived from the adjacent rift-border uplifts of the southern
Sandia, Manzanita, and Manzano Mountains. Six basaltic volcanic fields
interfinger with upper Santa Fe Group deposits: Black Mesa (2.68 Ma),
Isleta (2.73-2.79 Ma), Cat Mesa (3 Ma), El Cerro Tome (3.4 Ma) Los Lunas
(1.14 and 3.91 Ma) and Wind Mesa (4 Ma).
Dominantly north-trending faults crosscut older northwest-trending faults
that segmented the Santa Fe Group into multiple sub-basins. The western
basin is characterized by numerous normal faults with generally down-to-the-east
movement; several shorter, down-to-the-west faults are antithetic to the
dominant western margin faults and bound local horsts and grabens. The
eastern basin is defined by numerous down-to-the-west normal faults. Results
of this study do not support the presence of the inferred north-trending
Rio Grande fault of Russell and Snelson (1994). We interpret an older
(late Oligocene (?)-Miocene) northwest-trending fault-bounded depression
between the southwestern margin of the northwest-trending Mountainview
prong and the Isleta Pueblo graben that we call the Mountainview fault
zone.
Maldonado, F., Love, D.W., Connell, S.D., Slate, J.L., Karlstrom, K.E., 2001, Geology of Isleta Reservation, central New Mexico [abstract]: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, v. 33, n. 5, p. A-6.
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