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The Rio Grande follows this rift for much of its course. The Rio Grande rift is a north-trending continental rift zone. It separates the Colorado Plateau in the west from the interior of the North American craton on the east. [1] The rift extends from central Colorado in the north to the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, in the south. [2]
The deepest portion of the rift is along the Velarde graben, which is up to 5 km deep. [6] The Rio Grande became established in the basin in the Pliocene, around 4 million years ago. Volcanic activity in the Cerros del Rio periodically dammed the river and created a large lake in the Espanola basin. [3]
A mechanism similar to extension in the Rio Grande rift is thought to have generated topographic relief in the Guadalupe Mountains, and the timing of topographic relief generation has been estimated to ~20 million years ago using cave speleothem records and interpreted to reflect drainage of subsurface aquifers as topographic relief was ...
The Santa Fe Group is widely defined as basin-filling sedimentary and volcanic rocks of the Rio Grande rift. [1] These range in age from late Oligocene to Pleistocene. The oldest formations in the group correspond to the earliest structural deformation associated with rifting.
Map of the Middle Rio Grande Basin showing a section of the Rio Grande Valley (tan) before entering the Socorro Basin to the south. The entire Rio Grande Valley in New Mexico follows the Rio Grande Rift, a structural rift caused by the westward extension of the continental basement of the Western United States during the past 35 million years.
It is the largest volcanic field in the Rio Grande Rift, spreading over 7,000 square kilometers (2,700 sq mi). The total erupted volume is estimated at 420 cubic kilometers (100 cu mi). [ 1 ] The age of most of the vents and associated lava flows in the field is estimated to be between 1.8 and 4 million years, with a few 22-million-year-old vents.
Mar. 25—Could the secret behind New Mexico's hot springs become an energy source? Our cover story and Tech Outlook podcast this week are about New Mexico's geothermal energy potential, and ...
Intracontinental and marine rift basins such as the Gulf of Suez, East African Rift, Rio Grande rift system and the North Sea often contain a series of half-graben sub-basins, with the polarity of the dominant fault system changing along the axis of the rift. Often the extensional fault systems are segmented in these rifts.