Recent & Active Research
Jump To Project:
- Geometry and Kinematics of Rift Faults
- Annual Albuquerque Water Table Mapping
- MINES Thermodynamic Database
- Laramide Tectonics
- Capillary Raman Cell Experiments: The rare earth elements are in hot water (and feeling salty)!
- Ignimbrite Calderas
- Bureau scientists in Antarctica uncover climate knowledge frozen in time
- Do Martian manganese oxide deposits reveal biosignatures?
- Hydrogeologic Study of the Plains of San Agustin and the Alamosa Creek Valley
- Climate and Water Resources Advisory Report
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The current and recent research projects shown below are listed in random order.
Geometry and Kinematics of Rift Faults
The Rio Grande rift of central New Mexico is dominated by NNW- to NE-striking normal faults of Late Oligocene to Quaternary age. Crustal extension is distributed across many subparallel fault blocks. Fault traces commonly show abrupt changes in strike, often bifurcate, and occasionally step over to adjacent faults along transverse ramps (e.g. Chamberlin et.al, 1994a; Chamberlin and Harrison, 1996). Based on observations of striated fault surfaces most rift faults are apparently dip-slip to slightly oblique-slip normal faults. There is generally little or no evidence of significant strike slip faulting in areas of high-angle normal faulting. However, minor lateral slip may occur where a north or south propagating fault tip is deflected by a preexisting basement shear zone oriented at a high angle to the propagating rift fault (Chamberlin, 2000). Broad zones of lateral shear may be accommodated by a combination of minor vertical axis rotations and distributed oblique-slip normal faulting in which the dip-slip component is dominant.
Annual Albuquerque Water Table Mapping
Water-table mapping for the City of Albuquerque
MINES Thermodynamic Database
The MINES Thermodynamic Database is an initiative to generate a revised internally consistent thermodynamic dataset for minerals, aqueous species and gases for simulating geochemical processes at hydrothermal conditions in the upper crust (≤5 kbar and ≤600 °C) with focus on ore forming processes.
Alexander Gysi — Economic Geologist
Laramide Tectonics
The Laramide orogeny was a mountain building event that affected the US western interior during the Late Cretaceous to Paleogene (approximately 90–45 million years ago). Many of the iconic mountains and major oil and gas producing intermontane basins of the Rocky Mountains and Colorado Plateau, such as the Wind River range in Wyoming and the San Juan Basin here in New Mexico, formed during this time as Earth’s crust was compressed. The Laramide orogeny remains a major point of controversy, as it is difficult to explain how tectonism proceeded so far into the North American plate.
Capillary Raman Cell Experiments: The rare earth elements are in hot water (and feeling salty)!
Somewhere in the Earth’s crust a hot fluid is seeping through tiny cracks and fissures in the rock. The fluid is water and it carries with it a cargo of dissolved ions like chloride, sulfate, or carbonate. It might also carry dissolved metal ions useful to humans such copper, gold, or, in the case that we are considering, rare earth elements (REE). Fluids like this play important roles in forming ore deposits where the REE are present in high enough amounts to be mined. We want to understand how the REE interact with other dissolved ions and the water itself in order to better understand the conditions that allow water to mobilize, transport, or deposit REE.
Ignimbrite Calderas
Ignimbrite calderas are large volcanic depressions, often 10-20 miles in diameter, that form when a large-volume, gas-charged viscous magma body ejects huge columns of ash that collapse and inundate the surrounding countryside with a thick blanket of welded ash (called ignimbrite) while the shallow roof of the chamber collapses. Caldera-forming eruptions are relatively rare catastrophic events, second only in scale to large asteroid impacts. Deep magma systems that feed these "supervolcanoes" appear to march to the beat of there own drummer; eruptions are both episodic and irregular in timing and intensity.
Bureau scientists in Antarctica uncover climate knowledge frozen in time
Bureau scientists study Antarctic volcano to better understand ice sheet behavior
Do Martian manganese oxide deposits reveal biosignatures?
The recent discovery of manganese oxides on Mars suggests more oxygen was present in the Martian atmosphere the originally thought. A pilot project was recently funded by NASA to test the feasibility of discovering biosignatures in manganese deposits on Mars with payload instruments. There are two primary goals for this project; the first is to identify key chemical signatures and second to identify key mineralogical signatures in natural biologic and abiologic manganese materials. The pilot project will focus on three field sites in New Mexico that display features of formation that range from at or near the surface then extend to the deeper subsurface; essentially examining manganese deposits from surface, cave, geothermal springs, finally fossil hydrothermal environments. Should sufficient variation be noted during the pilot project, additional funding to the project will further characterize terrestrial occurrences for comparison to Mars by utilizing rover payload instruments
Hydrogeologic Study of the Plains of San Agustin and the Alamosa Creek Valley
Since 2007, the sparsely populated San Agustin Plains has been a controversial basin: a company applied for a permit to pump 54,000 acre-feet per year and to pipe that water to a region outside of the Plains. In 2009, the neighboring watershed to the south, Alamosa Creek — the only perennial stream in the region — faced similar pressure with a mining company exploring for beryllium. In response to these pressures and questions about the hydrogeology of this area, the NM Bureau of Geology began an integrated geologic and hydrologic study of the basins in 2009.
Climate and Water Resources Advisory Report
In support of development of a 50-year water plan for New Mexico, the Interstate Stream Commission has tasked the New Mexico Bureau of Geology & Mineral Resources with convening a group of 8 water and climate research experts as an Advisory Panel. Their task is to prepare a consensus study report on the current state of knowledge of how climate conditions and water resources may vary across our state during the next 50 years.