New Mexico

1. New Mexico …In the Beginning

2. Imagine! • What was the world like 300 Million years ago? NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

3. N.M….in the beginning • Well… • 300 million years ago, great inland seas covered the area and, once in place, they would eventually receded. • Those waters carried things like sediment and marine life. When the waters receded, they left much of these things behind. NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

4. N.M….in the beginning • The waters left layers of sandstone, limestone, and shale. NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

5. Banded Sandstone NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

6. N.M….in the beginning • 150 million years ago, violent forces literally tore apart the earth’s crust. • In some place, intense heat would erupt to the surface in the form of volcanoes. NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

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8. N.M….in the beginning So, in some places, volcanoes erupted through the surface and, in other places, mountains arose. NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

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10. N.M….in the beginning • In ancient time locally, the underlying rock wasn’t forced through the surface but, instead, it cooled and reformed to create gypsum! NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

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12. N.M….in the beginning • Gigantic piece of this gypsum form the core of the Sandia Mountains as well as the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

13. N.M….in the beginning • Now, do you understand why it is possible to find things like marine fossils in the mountains around Albuquerque? NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

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15. N.M….in the beginning • The waters mentioned earlier did more than just carry around sediment and marine life, they attracted the areas first tourists: • The Iguanodon! NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

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17. N.M….in the beginning • Iguanodon weighed approximately 4 tons. • He measured somewhere between 30-40 feet long! • Don’t worry! He was an HERBIVORE. NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

18. N.M….in the beginning • And the mountains? • The Sandia, today, have two peaks—North and South. Both peaks are approximately 10,000 feet. • The Sandias are twenty miles long and end in the south at Tijeras. NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

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20. N.M….in the beginning • Believe it or not but both the Sandias and the Manzanoscontinue to rise! • And… • The Rio Grande Valley continues to drop! NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

21. N.M….in the beginning • The Rio Grande Rift • A rift is a place in the earth’s crust where the crust is thinning and pulling apart. • It is approximately thirty (30) miles long. NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

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25. N.M….in the beginning • Over time, this rift has filled with things like clay, gravel, and silt carried by the winds, by gravity and by water. • This material reaches a depth of 10,000 feet and has collected water for tens of thousands of years! NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

26. N.M….in the beginning • This means: • When you drink local water, you are drinking water that is very, very old! • Indeed, the City of Albuquerque has relied on this water for more than a century. • This water is referred to as an underground cache NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

27. N.M….in the beginning • AQUIFER • These are underground areas that hold and provide a usable supply of water. NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

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29. N.M….in the beginning The main problems regarding groundwater in the Western half of the United States are that: • The depletion rate is much higher than the recharge rate. • There is groundwater contamination. NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

30. N.M….in the beginning • High groundwater depletion rates harm ecosystems which is detrimental to biodiversity. • Biodiversity is the variety of life in the world or in a particular habitat or ecosystem • An ecosystem is a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment. NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

31. N.M….in the beginning • States' groundwater regulations are too lenient and do not consider the multi-state nature of the resource. • In other words…aquifers often cross state lines and so decisions in one state affect the people and water of another…. NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

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33. N.M….in the beginning • The previous image is a map of all the groundwater supplies in the United States. • The light blue section in the center of the map spanning the majority of the United States from South Dakota to Texas and into New Mexico is the Ogallala Aquifer. NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

34. This image depicts the saturated thickness of the Ogallala Aquifer. Its saturated thickness is largest in Nebraska, and smallest around Texas. This is a problem because of the extensive dependence New Mexico‘s agriculture has on groundwater. 30% of irrigation water used in the state alone comes from groundwater! NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

35. N.M….in the beginning • LASTLY, another major problem concerning the nation’s aquifers is: • Public policies regarding environmental protection lack long term goals and seem to overlap each other to some extent. • In other words, one law seems to counteract another law and so on… NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

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37. N.M….in the beginning • Though the previous picture was taken in Western Texas it says a whole lot about the desperation that people in the South West are feeling in terms of water. • Farmers are suffering and losing valuable crops! • Animals are dying from dehydration! • What will we humans do without water? NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

38. N.M….in the beginning H2O… the water of life! NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

39. N.M….in the beginning • The Rio Grande Valley and the river that has flowed through the region has been the site of human activity for thousands of years. • Long before Europeans ever laid eyes on the area, Paleo-Indian Peoples called the region home. • Folsom Man • Sandia Man NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

40. How did early humans live, interact with each other, hunt and defend themselves? What sorts of tools did they use? This drawing tries to answer some of those questions! NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

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44. N.M….in the beginning • Imaginea world of snow and ice, when glaciers covered large parts of North America and huge animals, now extinct, roamed the land. The time is the late Ice Age—also known as the Pleistocene—and humans have entered the North American continent for the first time. NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

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46. N.M….in the beginning • Paleo-Indian Peoples arrived somewhere around 10,000 years ago. • The climate then was nothing like today and there were actually glaciers on the top of the Sandias and small, shallow lakes on the West Mesa. NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

47. N.M….in the beginning • These early inhabitants hunted a variety of now-extinct animals that roamed the Rio Grande Valley: • Mastodon • Wooly Mammoth • Giant Sloth • Giant Armadillo NM...in the beginning 2013-2014

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50. N.M….in the beginning • Today, New Mexico is a topographically high and generally dry landscape that ranges from high mountain peaks (above 13,000 feet) to rolling plains as low as 3.000 feet. NM...in the beginning 2013-2014