Albuquerque's Environmental Story

Educating For a Sustainable Community

Albuquerque's Natural Environment

Hidden Geology

Most of us notice with renewed delight each day the grandeur of the Sandia Mountain backdrop to the east, the dramatic volcanoes to the west, and the breathtaking expanse of the Rio Grande Basin between the two. Few of us, however, are aware of the sub-regions and the mini-environments we move across while traveling around the city. We seldom relate the uphill-downhill terrain to the mesas, alluvial fans, inner valley, terraces, flood plain, arroyos, and mountain uplands and lowlands on which the city is constructed.

1) Second to Twelfth Streets, site of Rio Grande 1,000 years ago
2) Central and Yale, edge of inner valley
3) Preservation of old plain surface
4) Southwest bank of old plain surface
5) Apex of Tijeras Creek alluvial fan
6) Crest of Embudo alluvial fan
7) Rio Grande Portland Cement Corp.

If we could turn the clock back thousands of years and strip the signs of civilization from the city's surface, all the natural features would be visible. Although we can't perform these miracles, we can use our knowledge of the city's geology to "look" below the roads and buildings to the land formations underlying them.

"At San Mateo the bear goes underground, there are several fast-food restaurants right on top of it....
'Do you know where Bear Canyon is?' I asked the clerk. 'Somewhere up by the mountains,' she said. 'You go up Academy a couple of lights, I think.' Twenty feet under her, forgotten by the city, lurked the bear."

Tom Harmon, "Ditchbank Chronicles", Albuquerque Journal, March 17, 1984

(Up to Section I, Back to Did You Know, On to Mini-Environments)

Copyright © 2008, Friends of Albuquerque's Environmental Story