Transcript New Mexico - Liz Collins' Classroom Website! :)

…In the Beginning
• Imagine!
– What was the
world like 300
Million
years ago?
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
2
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
3
N.M….in the beginning
• The waters left layers of sandstone,
limestone, and shale.
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
4
Banded Sandstone
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
5
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
6
N.M….in the beginning
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
7
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
8
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
9
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
10
N.M….in the beginning
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
11
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
12
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
13
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
14
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
15
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
16
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
17
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
18
N.M….in the beginning
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
19
N.M….in the beginning
• Believe it or not but both the Sandias and the
Manzanos continue to rise!
• And…
• The Rio Grande Valley continues to drop!
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
20
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
21
Rio Grande Rift
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
22
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
23
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
24
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
25
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
26
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
27
N.M….in the beginning
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
28
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
29
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
30
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
31
N.M….in the beginning
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
32
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
33
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
34
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
35
N.M….in the beginning
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
36
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
37
N.M….in the beginning
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
38
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
39
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
40
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
41
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
42
N.M….in the beginning
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
43
N.M….in the beginning
• Imagine a 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
44
N.M….in the beginning
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
45
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
46
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
47
N.M….in the beginning
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
48
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
49
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
50
N.M….in the beginning
• The drifting of the North American continent
over hundreds of millions of years has brought
the state of New Mexico to its present latitude
of approximately 35 degrees North
latitude placing it in the relatively warm and
dry region known as the TEMPERATE
ZONE.
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
51
N.M….in the beginning
• FAULTING and VOLCANISM built New
Mexico’s mountain ranges and these forces
have also concentrated metals and minerals
near the earth’s surface.
• Ancient swamps, forests, and sea floors were
the site of accumulation of organic matter
that formed into coal, oil, and natural gas.
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
52
N.M….in the beginning
• So, why did humans come here?
– They came for three reasons:
• To HUNT
• To MINE
• To FARM
• These three reasons have not only brought
humans here but shaped their settlement
patterns.
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
53
N.M….in the beginning
• Geological processes have played an
essential role in determining the climate,
the landscape, and the minable resources
available.
• The geological history of New Mexico thus
created the landscape we see today and has
helped to determine the human history of the
state.
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
54
N.M….in the beginning
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
55
N.M….in the beginning
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
56
N.M….in the beginning
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
57
N.M….in the beginning
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
58
N.M….in the beginning
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
59
N.M….in the beginning
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
60
N.M….in the beginning
NM...in the beginning 2013-2014
61