Ecology, Diversity, and Sustainability of the Middle Rio Grande Basin
This file was created by scanning the printed publication. Errors identified by the software have been corrected; however, some errors may remain. Chapter 4 Geology, Climate, land, and Water Quality Douglas G. Fox USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Fort Collins, Colorado Roy Jemison USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Flagstaff, Arizona Deborah Ulinski PoHer USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Albuquerque, New Mexico H. Maurice VaieH University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico RayWaHs U.S. Geological Survey, Fort Collins, Colorado GEOLOGY small extensions into Torrance, Santa Fe, Cibola, Rio Arriba, and Catron counties. The Middle Rio Grande is part of the chain of struc The principal landforms of the Middle Rio Grande tural basins, known as the Rio Grande depression, include: (1) pediments, (2) dissected slopes, (3) fault that extends from the San Luis Valley in Colorado to scarps, (4) terraces, (5) alluvial slopes, (6) alluvial fans El Paso, Texas, and through which the Rio Grande and cones, (7) major stream floodplains or valley flows (Chapin and Seager 1975). Bryan (1938) is cred bottoms, (8) eolian blankets and dunes, and (9) vol ited with designating this reach as the Rio Grande canic fields, ridges, and cones (Kelly 1977; "depression," because of his early research and the Fitzsimmons 1959). level of understanding he provided on the geology of the region. This area is also known as the Rio CHANNEL AND BASIN DESCRIPTIONS Grande "rift," a term coined by Kelly (1952), based on his belief in the possibility of significant longitu Lagasse (1981) described the channel of the Middle dinal displacement in the "trough" or depression Rio Grande as a shifting sand substratum with low, (Baltz 1978).
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