The population centers in Alamogordo, Carrizozo, La Luz, and numerous other small communities, are largely supported by groundwater resources. With few perennial streams in this closed basin, water is sparse. Fresh water resources are limited, and recharge to these areas originates within the high elevation watersheds in the Sacramento Mountains, as precipitation, stream and spring flow. This goal of this study was to improve understanding of the groundwater resources in this region by identifying recharge areas and quantities, determining groundwater flow rates and direction, and to interpret the groundwater/surface water interactions that exist in the region. Methods used in this effort included geologic mapping, groundwater level measurements, and geochemical analyses of the groundwater, springs and streams.
The Tularosa Basin is an elongate, north-trending intermontane basin of the greater Rio Grande Rift system, occupying approximately 6,500 square miles in south-central New Mexico. The basin is bordered by Sierra Blanca and the Sacramento Mountains to the east; and the San Andres, Organ, and Franklin Mountains to the west. The basin merges to the south with the Hueco Bolson, extending into west Texas. Extensive fault systems with several thousand feet of vertical displacement separate the basin from the east and west-flanking uplifts (Lozinsky and Bauer, 1991). As regional uplift progressed, concurrent erosion of the surrounding highlands has resulted in deposition of more than 6,000 feet of alluvial basin-fill material, consisting of unconsolidated to weakly-cemented gravel, sand, silt and clay deposited in a series of coalescing alluvial fans around the margins of the basin. The basin fill is underlain by consolidated bedrock, thought to consist largely of Paleozoic carbonates.
The New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources has a long history of conducting and supporting hydrogeologic investigations in the Estancia Basin of central New Mexico (selected references below). A compilation by R.E. Smith of the U.S. Geological Survey was published by the Bureau of Geology (then the NM Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources) as part of its Groundwater Report series in the 1950s, and remains an important reference. The report by F.B. Titus, which encompasses the greater East Mountain area (including the northwestern side of Estancia Basin), was published as a Bureau of Geology Hydrologic Report and is another important source of information concerning groundwater availability and quality. During the 1980s, Bureau of Geology geologists conducted a variety of field studies that led to New Mexico’s proposal to have the federally funded superconducting super collider (SSC) constructed in this state. Although the SSC project was focused primarily on engineering geology, it resulted in the acquisition of data from shallow borings, trench studies, and geophysical investigations, and pulled together information from a variety of sources.
The Water Data Act (NMSA 1978, § 72-4B) marks the first time in New Mexico’s history that a law has been enacted to identify and integrate key water data. In response to this 2019 legislation, the directing agencies including NM ISC, NM OSE, NMED, and EMNRD, as convened by the NMBGMR, are working toward developing an integrated Water Data Service for New Mexico. Multiple working groups have been convened, working to ensure that the data and useful information about the data is findable, accessible, interoperable, and usable for those seeking water information for decision making related to water management and planning – the primary goal of the legislation. The initial data platform can be found at newmexicowaterdata.org as a first data inventory step for this multi-year project.
The southern Española Basin, in the Santa Fe region, was the focus of a multi-year, multi-disciplinary hydrogeologic study by the Aquifer Mapping Program, in collaboration with the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer (NMOSE), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and other agencies. The purpose of this study was to improve the understanding of the water resources within the basin, which serves as the primary source of drinking water for most of the area’s population.
The main objective of this study is to examine hydrogeologic processes in Snowy River Passage by analysis of individual flood events. For a specific flood event, we will measure:
The volume of water that infiltrates downward through the Snowy River streambed
The volume of water that evaporates from the Snowy River stream
The volume of water that discharges at Government Spring
The City of Truth or Consequences has contracted NM Tech Earth and Environmental Science Department and the New Mexico Bureau of Geology to undertake a 1-year field and hydrologic modeling study focused on the sustainability of geothermal resources. The NM Bureau of Geology and the Aquifer Mapping Program will provide additional funding and support for this study.
Building on its basin-scale hydrogeologic studies of the Española Basin (2003-2010), the Aquifer Mapping Program continues to monitor water levels in the area for a better understanding of the groundwater contribution to the wetlands around La Cienega. This work was completed with collaboration and support from NMED, NMOSE, Santa Fe County, and USF&WS and the Healy Foundation.
The Socorro and La Jencia Basins are located in Socorro Co., New Mexico, and define a transition where the Rio Grande Rift system broadens into a series of parallel basins separated by intra-rift horst blocks (Chapin, 1971). This broadening represents a general southward increase in crustal extension along the Rio Grande Rift (Adams and Keller, 1994). The Socorro Basin is hydraulically connected to rift basins to the north and south by flow-through drainage of the Rio Grande and southward flow of groundwater through alluvial sediments of the Rio Grande valley. By contrast, the La Jencia Basin has no perennial stream drainage (Anderholm, 1983). The two basins are separated by the Socorro Peak-Lemitar Mountains intra-rift horst, which splits the rift into two semi-parallel halves (Chapin, 1971), and restricts groundwater flow between the basins.
Several thousand water-level measurements spanning over 50 years, from over a thousand wells, were used to create aquifer lifetime projections for the High Plains aquifer in eastcentral New Mexico. Lifetime projections were made based on past water-level decline rates calculated over ten- and twenty-year intervals. Projected lifetimes were calculated for two scenarios. One scenario is the time until total dewatering of the full saturated thickness of the aquifer, and the other scenario is the time until a 30-ft saturated thickness threshold is reached, which is the minimum necessary to sustain high-capacity irrigation wells. Agricultural water use has largely determined water-level decline rates in the past. Assuming future decline rates match those of the past ten to twenty years, the two scenarios may be viewed as the usable aquifer lifetime for domestic and low-intensity municipal and industrial uses, and the usable lifetime for large-scale irrigated agriculture.
