East of San Marcial, NM
October 20, 2021
We are doing an audio-magnetotelluric survey today east of San Marcial. Geologically, we are in the structural accommodation zone between the northern Marcial Basin and the southern Socorro Basin. In the photo, Marissa Fichera, Shari Kelley, and Kyle Gallant are huddled around a white boxlike thing which is the data logger for the operation. Shari is a geophysicist and Marissa is a hydrogeologist with the NM Bureau of Geology; Kyle is an undergrad at NM Tech. The photo looks northward. The mountains on the right are the Little San Pascual Mtns and those on the left are the Chupadera Hills. Hopefully we will get useful results that can tell us something about the variations of depth to bedrock and groundwater salinity changes in this enigmatic area. It is enigmatic because the geology on the surface is Holocene eolian sand overlying hundreds of feet of axial-fluvial sand of the Santa Fe Group — both of which are weakly to unconsolidated and make for very poor exposure.
— Dan Koning, Sr. Field Geologist