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Results for “New Mexico Geology”

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At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources
USGS2007

Time-domain electromagnetic soundings to characterize water quality within a freshwater/saline-water transition zone, Estancia Valley, New Mexico, July 2005: A reconnaissance study

During July 2005, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, conducted a reconnaissance study in the Estancia Valley in central New Mexico to characterize water quality using time-domain electromagnetic (TDEM) surface-geophysical soundings. TDEM sounding is one of a number of surface geophysical methods that provide a relatively quick and inexpensive means to characterize subsurface geologic and hydrogeologic properties. TDEM surface geophysical methods can be used to detect variations in the electrical resistivity of the subsurface, which in turn can be related to variations in the physical and chemical properties of soil, rock, and pore fluids.

New Mexico↗
USGS1941

Geology of the Moreno Valley, New Mexico

The Moreno Valley, located along the complex eastern boundary between the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the Great Plains, is structurally a broad, northwardplunging syncline, disrupted by smaller folds and faults. This major synclinal structure is the result of the Laramide disturbance. Deformation, however, has continued possibly into the Quaternary. Intrusions, probably contemporaneous with those of the Spanish Peaks, have deformed the strata in the northern portion of the Moreno Valley. Scully Mountain is a northwestward-plunging anticline produced by a porphyry intrusion. A Mid-Tertiary surface of low relief is now represented by broad mountain flats at elevations near 10,000 feet. The Moreno Valley was initiated as a topographic feature about the close of the Mid-Tertiary. Its subsequent history is in many respects similar to that of the Rio Grande Depression. During the Quaternary a broad valley stage and three lower pediments have been developed. The lowest pediments are cut on deformed valley fill, believed to be Pliocene and here named the Eagle Nest formation. The early drainage of the valley was south and east into the Canadian River. Stream piracy by the Cimarron River diverted drainage to the east through the present Cimarron Canyon into the Canadian River. Drainage south of the point of capture has been reversed for about 14 miles, the present stream draining the southern portion of the Moreno Valley flowing northward to the Cimarron River. © 1941 Geological Society of America.

New Mexico↗
USGS1978

Guidebook to Rio Grande rift in New Mexico

Discusses the details of geologic features along the rift zone. Included are short papers on topics relative to the overall region. These papers and the road logs are of special interest to any one pursuing further study of the rift. This book is a comprehensive guide to the middle and late Cenozoic geology of the Rio Grande region of Colorado and New Mexico. Though initially used on field trips for the International Symposium on Tectonics and Magmatism of the Rio Grande rift, the guidebook will be useful to anyone interested in the Cenozoic history of the 600-mi-long area extending from central Colorado to El Paso, Texas.

New Mexico↗
USGS1964

Geology of the Guadalupe Mountains, New Mexico

After the discovery of oil in Permian rocks in Winkler County, Tex., in 1920, petroleum exploration intensified in adjacent parts of western Texas and southeastern New Mexico. Almost immediately unusual stratigraphic complexities were discovered in the Permian rocks. Thus began a long period of stratigraphic investigations, chiefly reconnaissance studies, of the Permian rocks of the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas and New Mexico. Before 1930 some of the complexities began to be resolved as several geologists almost simultaneously recognized the great barrier reef of Capitan age which separates rocks of radically different character. To the northwest is a great sequence of rocks deposited on a platform area, whereas to the southeast lie the rocks of the Delaware basin. The relations of the basin rocks to the rocks of the reef zone were lucidly described by P. B. King (1942, 1948), but confusion and differences of opinion continued about the relations of the shelf rocks to their correlatives in the basin. The present investigation is an attempt, by means of detailed areal mapping, to resolve the relations of the shelf-rock units to one another and to the reef and basin rocks and to clarify the confusing stratigraphic nomenclature.

New Mexico↗
USGS1953

Uranium-bearing coal and carbonaceous shale in La Ventana Mesa area, Sandoval County, New Mexico

Uranium-bearing coal, carboanceous shale, and carboaceous sandstone of Upper Cretaceous age occur on and adjacent to La Ventana Mesa, Sandoval County, New Mexico. The geologic features of the uranium deposits are described and a hypothesis for the origin and control of the uranium deposits are described and a hypothesis for the origin and control of the uranium deposits is given. On the basis of recent sampling and analyses the uranium content in coal is found to be as much as 0.62 percent, whereas the coal ash has a uranium content that is as much as 1.34 percent.

New Mexico↗
USGS2008

Upper Cretaceous molluscan record along a transect from Virden, New Mexico, to Del Rio, Texas

Updated age assignments and new collections of molluscan fossils from lower Cenomanian through upper Campanian strata in Texas permit a much refined biostratigraphic correlation with the rocks of New Mexico and the Western Interior. Generic names of many Late Cretaceous ammonites and inoceramid bivalves from Texas are updated to permit this correlation. Strata correlated in the west-to-east transect include the lower Cenomanian Beartooth Quartzite and Sarten Sandstone of southwest New Mexico, and the Eagle Mountains Formation, Del Rio Clay, Buda Limestone, and. basal beds of the Chispa Summit, Ojinaga, and Boquillas Formations of the Texas-Mexico border area. Middle Cenomanian strata are lacking in southwestern New Mexico but are present in the lower parts of the Chispa Summit and Boquillas Formations in southwest Texas. Upper Cenomanian and lower Turonian rocks are present at many localities in New Mexico and Texas in the Mancos Shale and Chispa Summit, Ojinaga, and Boquillas Formations. Middle Turonian and younger rocks seem to be entirely nonmarine in southwestern New Mexico, but they are marine in the Rio Grande area in the Chispa. Summit, Ojinaga, and Boquillas Formations. The upper part of the Chispa Summit and Boquillas contain late Turonian fossils. Rocks of Coniacian and Santonian age are present high in the Chispa Summit, Ojinaga, and Boquillas Formations, and in the lower part of the Austin. The San Carlos, Aguja, Pen, and Austin Formations contain fossils of Campanian age. Fossils representing at least 38 Upper Cretaceous ammonite zones are present along the transect. Collections made in recent years in southwestern New Mexico and at Sierra de Cristo Rey just west of downtown El Paso, Texas, have been well treated and do not need revision. Taxonomic names and zonations published in the pre-1970 literature on the Rio Grande area of Texas have been updated. New fossil collections from the Big Bend National Park, Texas, allow for a much refined correlation in the central part of the transect in Texas. Middle Turonian-Campanian zonation in southwest Texas is based mainly on ammonites of the Family Collignoniceratidae, as opposed to the scaphitid and baculitid ammonites that are especially abundant farther north in the Western Interior.

New Mexico Geology↗
USGS1994

Facies and age of the Oso Ridge Member (new), Abo Formation, Zuni Mountains, New Mexico

The Oso Ridge Member (new), at the base of the Abo Formation, nonconformably overlies Proterozoic rocks. The member consists of some 9m of conglomerate and arkose composed principally of fragments of the underlying Proterozoic metamorphic rocks; thin, fossiliferous limestone lenses are interbedded with the arkose. Biota from the lenses include a phylloid alga, foraminifers, conodonts, brachiopods, and molluscs. The age of the Oso Ridge Member is Virgilian Late Pennsylvanian) to Wolfcampian (Early Permian). -from Authors

New Mexico Geology↗
USGS1996

Ramah Member of the Crevasse Canyon Formation - A new stratigraphic unit in the Zuni Basin, west-central New Mexico

Nonmarine deposition accompanying and following a regression of the Cretaceous Interior Seaway during late Turonian time left a sedimentary sequence consisting of fluvial channel sandstones, thin overbank sandstones, and paludal shales containing thin coal beds. This unit is herein designated the Ramah Member of the Crevasse Canyon Formation. The Ramah Member is locally well exposed in the Zuni Basin of west-central New Mexico where it rests on the Gallup Sandstone (marine) and is overlain by the distinctive, feldspathic Torrivio Member of the Crevasse Canyon Formation (formerly of the Gallup Sandstone) Near Ramah, New Mexico the sequence overlies the F member of the Gallup but northward it overlies progressively younger members. These younger members are discrete sand-stone units associated with minor oscillations of relative sea level during a major regional-scale regression. North and east of Puerco Gap, near Gallup. New Mexico, the Ramah Member thins appreciably, and where unmappable it may be included with the Torrivio Member Southward from Gallup in the Zuni Basin. the Ramah locally approaches 150 ft in thickness and contains minable coal beds. The interval was previously referred to as the coal-bearing member of the Gallup (Mapel and Yesberger, 1985) or the Ramah unit (Anderson and Stricker, 1904). In the northern part of the Zuni Basin a problem may exist locally in determinig the top of the Ramah Member. This is due to the presence of fluviel sandstone with coarse-grained facies that looks much the s ame as the Torrivio Member, but underlines it Two criteria may be employed to distiguish the lower sandstone from the Torrivio and properly place it in the strartigraphic succession: (1) the lower sandstone is generally not as feldspathic as the Torrivio nor do the coarse-grained facies contain pebble-size material; and (2) the lower sandstone is not nearly as widespread as the overlying Torrivio. which has a blanket geometry. The type section of the Ramah Member is in the SE1/4 NW1/4 sec. 16 T10N R16W approximately 4 mi southwest of the town of Ramah. The principal coal lies near the top of the member and was mined during the 1920s to supply coal for the Zuni Pueblo schools.

New Mexico Geology↗
USGS1998

Core drilling provides information about Santa Fe Group aquifer system beneath Albuquerque's West Mesa

Core samples from the upper ???1500 ft of the Santa Fe Group in the Albuquerque West Mesa area provide a first-hand look at the sediments and at subsurface stratigraphic relationships in this important part of the basin-fill aquifer system. Two major hydrostratigraphic subunits consisting of a lower coarse-grained, sandy interval and an overlying fine-grained, interbedded silty sand and clay interval lie beneath the water table at the 98th St core hole. Borehole electrical conductivity measurements reproduce major textural changes observed in the recovered cores and support subsurface correlations of hydrostratigraphic units in the Santa Fe Group aquifer system based on geophysical logs. Comparison of electrical logs from the core hole and from nearby city wells reveals laterally consistent lithostratigraphic patterns over much of the metropolitan area west of the Rio Grande that may be used to delineate structural and related stratigraphic features that have a direct bearing on the availability of ground water.

New Mexico Geology↗