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    Valles Caldera: A Geologic History
    Valles Caldera: A Geologic History
    Valles Caldera: A Geologic History
    Ebook171 pages4 hours

    Valles Caldera: A Geologic History

    By Fraser Goff

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The Valles Caldera consists of a twelve-mile-wide collapsed volcanic crater and more than ten postcollapse volcanic domes in New Mexico's Jemez Mountains. For over a century, it was safeguarded within the 89,000-acre Baca Ranch. In the year 2000, Congress passed the Valles Caldera Preservation Act, creating the Valles Caldera Trust to purchase the ranch and create a nine-member board of trustees responsible for the protection and development of the Valles Caldera National Preserve.

    With special permission, qualified geologists interested in volcanic processes and hydrothermal systems have been allowed to conduct research on the preserve. One of those volcanologists, Fraser Goff, collaborated with the Valles Caldera Trust to provide an accessible scientific overview of the caldera's geologic wonders.

    Presented in two parts, Valles Caldera first offers a summary of significant geologic events that have taken place in the Valles Caldera area. Then Goff presents the geology, volcanology, and geothermal characteristics of the Caldera and the Jemez volcanic field. Geologic terms and names unfamiliar to all but professional geologists are defined in a summarizing glossary.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of New Mexico Press
    Release dateMay 16, 2009
    ISBN9780826345912
    Valles Caldera: A Geologic History
    Author

    Fraser Goff

    Fraser Goff is adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of New Mexico. A Fellow of the Geological Society of America, Goff retired from the Geology/Geochemistry Group at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in 2004 after twenty-six years of service. In 1994, the respected volcanologist discovered that the Galeras volcano in the Colombian Andes was spewing more than a pound of gold each day into the atmosphere and estimated that forty-five pounds of gold a year was deposited into the rocks beneath the crater. Goff has worked on more than forty geothermal systems and fifteen active volcanoes during his career.

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    • 4/5
      Picked up for a planned trip. A really nicely done little book, directed at an advanced lay audience. Author Fraser Goff worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory for 26 years, in the Geology/Geochemistry Group; I had no idea LANL had one of those, but I suppose it helps in figuring out where to direct the earthquake-inducing death rays. A definition: Unfortunately, volcanologists use the term caldera to describe two rather different things. One is the crater at the top of a conventional volcano, especially if it is a large one and at least partially due to collapse after eruption. The other is a different animal altogether; huge circular volcanic features that are the result of collapse of a large magma chamber after a caldera eruption. Caldera eruptions do not come from anything a casual bystander would recognize as a volcano; there’s no central vent or mountain; instead the eruption comes from a ring fault surrounding the magma body. And if you are a casual bystander witnessing one of these things, you’re not going to be casual or standing by very long, because they are apocalyptic. Fortunately, they are also rare; the most recent one was the Lake Toba eruption in about 75000 BCE that came pretty close to wiping out humanity (I note there is some debate about whether Lake Toba is a true caldera or just a larger than ordinary volcano; not that it matters that much, it’s around 2800 km**3 of ash in either case).The famous North American calderas are Yellowstone, Long Lake, and Valles. I was surprised to find Valles is far and away the most thoroughly studied; it was heavily drilled both for oil and geothermal energy, thus a lot is known about the subsurface. There are actually two caldera eruptions involved; the Valles eruption (around 1.2 Mya) partially destroyed the earlier Toledo caldera (around 1.6 Mya). Technically, Valles is still an active volcano, in the “Solfatara” stage, as there are still fumaroles producing steam and sulfur. There is, of course, no particular reason why it couldn’t erupt again as either a caldera or a lesser volcano; Yellowstone has been blowing up every 650 Kya or so.After the caldera eruption, you end up with a negative terrain feature; and there is abundant sedimentological evidence of various size lakes in Valles. However, sooner or later the magma starts moving up again, resulting in a “resurgent caldera” which is more or less like a cork slowly being pushed out of a bottle by internal pressure. Since the “cork” has been pretty badly shattered there are often little (well, little relative to the caldera; not anything you’d want in your back yard) volcanoes scattered around the dome when magma has pushed up through faults, plus another batch (“moat volcanoes”) around the old ring fault; the most recent eruption of one of these was about 40 Kya.Valles Caldera is roughly centered in another circular feature, the Jemez Mountains, which are also volcanic, going all the way back to the Miocene. There are no obvious signs of earlier caldera-type eruptions, but volcanoes have the geologically annoying habit of destroying evidence of their predecessors. Since the Jemez Mountains are mostly rhyolite, earlier caldera eruptions are certainly a possibility. You can draw a more or less straight line from the Raton volcanic fields around Raton, New Mexico, through the Mora volcanics around Taos, through the Jemez Mountains, Mt. Taylor, the Zuni-Bandera volcanics, the Springerville volcanics, the White Mountains in Arizona, and ending in the San Carlos mountains; the line is called the Jemez Lineament. Whether this is a real feature or wishful thinking like ley lines or canals on Mars is unclear; Goff allows that it might be related to an Proterozoic suture zone (apparently there’s some seismic reflection data that suggests something way down there) but is not convinced. All the mentioned fields are Miocene so it’s kind of a stretch to relate them to something Proterozoic. OTOH the Rio Grande rift started developing about the same time, so maybe something did get stirred up down there.This is one of the best-illustrated popular geology books I’ve ever run across. All the diagrams and photographs are in color, and they all properly illustrate what they are supposed to show. There are no notes or direct references, but there is a suggested reading list. One thing that’s missing is any sort of field guide; although there are generalized highway maps there are no directions on how to get to specific points of interest. However, the reading list includes several of the excellent New Mexico Geological Society field guidebooks. Recommended for armchair geologists and excellent as a supplement to a good field guide.

    Book preview

    Valles Caldera - Fraser Goff

    Valles Caldera

    A Geologic History

    Valles Caldera

    A Geologic History

    Fraser Goff

    ISBN for this digital edition: 978-0-8263-4590-5

    © 2009 by the University of New Mexico Press

    All rights reserved. Published 2009

    Printed in Singapore by TWP America, Inc.

    14   13   12   11   10   09          1   2   3   4   5   6

    The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Goff, Fraser.

    Valles Caldera : a geologic history / Fraser Goff. — 1st ed.

    p. cm.

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN 978-0-8263-4590-5 (PBK. : ALK. PAPER)

    1. Geology—New Mexico—Valles Caldera—Guidebooks.

    2. Valles Caldera (N.M.)—Guidebooks.

    3. Valles Caldera (N.M.)—History. I. Title.

    QE144.V35G64 2009

    551.2109789’5—dc22

    2008034077

    Book and cover design and type composition by Kathleen Sparkes.

    The illustrations on the following pages were also produced by Kathleen Sparkes: ix, 4, 14, 17, 21, 22, 34, 55, 61, 63, 66, 67, 73, 81, 82

    Contents

    Introduction

    Part One Pre–Valles Caldera Geology

    Early Geologic Events and Old Rocks

    The Supercontinent Pangaea

    The Western Interior Seaway of North America

    The Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction

    The Colorado Plateau

    The Rio Grande Rift: Structure, Sedimentation, and Volcanism

    The Jemez Lineament

    Part Two Geology of Jemez Volcanic Field and Valles Caldera

    Jemez Volcanic Field

    Formation of Toledo and Valles Calderas

    Evolution of Valles Caldera

    The Resurgent Caldera and Ash-Flow Tuff Models

    Eruption Volumes, Eruption Impacts, and Eruption Frequency

    The Next Valles Eruption

    Where Does the Magma Come From and Is There More?

    Magnetic Polarity Events

    Geophysical Character of Valles Caldera

    The Valles Geothermal System

    Valles Lake History

    Climate Change Research at Valles Caldera

    Other Geoscience in Valles after 2000

    Conclusions

    Acknowledgments

    Geologic Glossary

    Selected Bibliography

    Index

    Introduction

    Valles Caldera (caldera of valleys) is perhaps the world’s best example of a resurgent caldera, a giant circular volcano with an uplifted central floor. Consequently, Valles Caldera is a site where volcanologists the world over come to study large eruptions and their deposits. Valles Caldera also contains an active geothermal system that was once intensively explored for possible electricity generation. The large valleys within the caldera once contained lakes whose sedimentary record is now studied for climate change patterns. Valles Caldera and the Jemez Mountains are but one volcanic field of many that form a northeast-trending chain, the Jemez lineament, across northern New Mexico. The Valles region also overlies the boundary of the Colorado Plateau and the Rio Grande rift, two fascinating geologic provinces in the southwestern United States. In one or two scenic trips around and through the caldera region, the curious visitor with broad interests in geology can see many examples of ancient and relatively young rocks and fundamental earth processes.

    J. W. Powell, famous American explorer and second director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), first described volcanism in the Jemez Mountains during reconnaissance work in the 1880s. By the 1920s, C. S. Ross (also with the USGS) recognized that the central depression of the Jemez Mountains was a tremendous caldera. In the 1960s, R. L. Smith and R. A. Bailey (USGS) published an explanation for caldera formation and evolution that was based on their research in Valles, an explanation that is used worldwide today. Geothermal exploration and development activities conducted primarily by Union Oil of California (Unocal) and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) supported broad geoscientific studies and drilling endeavors in the Jemez Mountains and Valles Caldera during the 1970s and 1980s. Since the mid-1990s, Valles Caldera has been the focus for environmental, ecological, and climate change research.

    Figure 1. Location map of the Jemez Mountains and Valles Caldera with respect to the Jemez lineament and separate volcanic fields, the Colorado Plateau, and basins of the Rio Grande rift. EB = Española Basin segment of the rift. The segment in the vicinity of the Taos volcanic field is the San Luis Basin, and the segment south of the Jemez volcanic field is the Albuquerque Basin (from Goff and Gardner 2004).

    This geologic history is presented in two parts. In the first part, I will summarize significant geologic events surrounding and predating the Valles Caldera and Jemez Mountains. In the second part, I will discuss at some length the geology, volcanology, and geothermal characteristics of the Valles Caldera and Jemez volcanic field. Terms and names not familiar to most nongeologists are printed in bold text when first used and are defined in a glossary that is provided at the end of this history.

    Figure 2. Road map of Jemez Mountains (green) and Valles Caldera (orange). Large urban areas are yellow. Map by Kathleen Sparkes, 2008.

    Part One Pre–Valles Caldera Geology

    Early Geologic Events and Old Rocks

    Our geologic history begins more than 1.8 billion years ago (1.8 Ga; fig. 3). Surface exposures and drill-hole materials show that ancient rocks forming the southwestern part of the North American craton (or Canadian Shield) underlie New Mexico. These rocks consist primarily of igneous and metamorphic rocks, such as coarse crystalline granite and gneiss and fine-grained schist cut by and interlayered with ancient metamorphosed basalt. The assembly of these rocks into recognizable terrains or belts indicates that plate tectonics and continental drift were well established by the end of Precambrian time. (All rocks older than 545 million years are part of the Precambrian time interval in Earth history.)

    Precambrian rocks are exposed as faulted, pink to red granite and gneiss at Soda Dam, just north of Jemez Springs, and at Guadalupe Box, southwest of Valles Caldera (figs. 2, 4a). Precambrian rocks are also present in the mountain slopes east of Santa Fe and Albuquerque, and in the core of the Sierra Nacimiento west and northwest of Valles. Precambrian rocks in the Valles region are not homogeneous. They consist of various types of granite, gneiss, schist, and other metamorphic rocks; some are massive and others are layered and folded.

    Although it is well known that primitive life-forms existed in Precambrian time, widespread development of multicelled species began in the Cambrian Period (545 to 505 million years ago, or Ma) and flourished in oceans of the Paleozoic Era (545 to 245 Ma). Unfortunately, rocks of early to middle Paleozoic age are not present in the Valles Caldera region and so are not discussed here.

    About 320 Ma, erosion of the North American craton formed a series of sandstone, siltstone, conglomerate, and limestone beds at the margin of an early ocean that covered a large part of the North American continent. These sedimentary rocks, widely recognizable in northern New Mexico, straddle the Mississippian–Pennsylvanian time boundary, midway in the Carboniferous Period (fig. 3), and are named the Arroyo Peñasco Group and the Sandia Formation. Near Valles Caldera these rocks are best exposed immediately north of Precambrian granite at Guadalupe Box. The Sandia Formation is named after a sedimentary sequence that overlies Precambrian rocks at Sandia Peak, east of Albuquerque.

    Figure 3. The modern geologic time scale, circa 2005. Note that each successive column (left to right) expands the upper portion

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