Part of what makes New Mexico the Land of Enchantment are the dozens of hot springs found all over the state.
But most people don’t stop to consider that those relaxing springs are fueled by something slightly less peaceful: fiery hot magma.
Tobias Fischer, an associate professor for earth and planetary sciences, said the state is rich with magmatic activity.
“The youngest eruptions we have out in Grants are not that old, about 10,000 years or so,” he said. “We have evidence of magma below Valles Caldera and there is very good evidence of a magma body below Socorro. So, the rift in this area is still magmatically active.”
But Fischer said the area is not as active as the subduction zones (where two tectonic plates collided) near Mount St. Helens or Alaska, so New Mexicans need not fear the possibility of eruption in the near future.
“Here it seems to be on a slower time scale,” he said. “The rift (a place where the earth’s crust and the lithosphere separate) has stopped expanding, but there is still a lot of heat down there. We have quite a high heat flux here. … But not all magma bodies erupt.”
Fischer said some of the state’s largest volcanoes, the Zuni Bandera, lie in the southern part of the state and are a different type of volcano than others like Mount Taylor in northwestern New Mexico.
New Mexico volcanoes are world-famous because their remains have been left such in good condition, Fischer said. The volcanoes formed along the Rio Grande Rift, starting in the south.
“Zuni Bandera is actually basalt,” he said. “It has the basaltic lava, which is about 50 percent silica content. Whereas Mount Taylor is an andesitic volcano, which you can already tell by the shape. It really looks like a volcano because the lava is more silicic and it builds up.”
The Zuni-Bandera volcanoes are more similar to the kind of volcanic eruptions seen in Hawaii, Fischer said. They have lava tubes whose last lava flow was about 3,000 years ago.
“There are a number of volcanoes there that are mostly small volcanoes, or cinder cones,” he said. “So lava flows and ash eruptions may be typical of what you would see on television. You can envision it like that, as a fountain of lava and red rocks shooting out. It covers a pretty big area.”
Senior Andrew Grouios, an earth and planetary science major, said UNM students would be surprised by the diversity of volcanoes in New Mexico, such as in the Jemez area.
“I think the public education on volcanoes is probably not as good as it should be,” he said. “Especially considering the proximity of some of the volcanoes in this area, such as over on the West Side. The West Side volcanoes are literally about a 15-minute drive from UNM.”
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Fischer said the volcanoes in that area near Albuquerque are about 150,000 years old.
“They’re related to the (Rio Grande) rift as well,” he said. “And they’re basaltic in composition. They are Hawaiian-style eruptions. So you have a vent and you have these pieces of lava just being thrown out of the vent glowing red-hot, making big lava fountains, and then falling down. And those are the little spatters that you would see if you went down there.”
Fischer said anyone can see obvious signs of eruption just by hiking around the volcanoes.
“People come here from all over the world to teach classes and to look at the deposits because they are so well preserved because we’re in the desert, so there is no weathering,” he said. “The deposits look like they erupted a few thousand years ago.”
*Visit
Valles Caldera — in the Jemez, about an hour and a half from Albuquerque
Mount Taylor — northeast of Grants
The Zuni Bandera — in El Malpais National Monument
The Albuquerque Volcanoes — on the West Mesa, off of Paseo de Volcan
*
