geography

NEW MEXICO Geography 325V

Dr. Wright

New Mexico Learning Objectives

 Gain a working knowledge of the physical,

economic, cultural, and historical geography of

New Mexico

 What makes NM so different from other Western states?

 Specific learning objectives given for each section

 Apply this knowledge to analyze a major question

 “Why is New Mexico so poor and what should we do

about it?

 A 10-page research paper is assigned (see syllabus)

NM and Poverty

Percentage of children living in poverty Why does NM always have such a high rate?

Applied Geography

 Analyzing diverse facts and factors to help

solve a problem faced by society

 As we go through the New Mexico section

your goal is both learn factual content and

use that information to address our big

question

 Why is New Mexico so poor and what should

we do about it?

New Mexico Geographic Traits

 What are the key traits of New Mexico?

 What makes NM different than Arizona,

Utah, Colorado, Montana…?

 Let’s talk about this

New Mexico

Physical Geography

 What the land is like

 The physical stage for human events

 What opportunities and limitations does the

natural environment create?

Learning Objectives

 Physiographic Provinces of New Mexico

 Be able to draw boundaries and know the landforms

 Patterns of aridity in NM

 Orographic Precipitation and “Sky Islands”

 Arizona Monsoon – why does it happen?

 The Spring Wind of the Southwest (name for it?)

 Chihuahuan Desert

 Be able to draw the boundary and know ecological traits

 Terrain Analog

 Be able to define and give examples

Landforms of the North America

Fenneman Version of

U.S. Physiographic Provinces Use this one for studying

New Mexico – Physiography

New Mexico’s

Physiographic Provinces

• Basin and Range: mountains and broad basins (Albuquerque, Las Cruces)

– Gila Mountains: Datil-Mogollon volcanics

– Rio Grande Rift: a structural valley running north-south through New Mexico

• Colorado Plateau: sedimentary rocks and deep canyons (Navajo Nation)

• Southern Rockies: Sangre de Cristo and Jemez Mountains (Santa Fe, Taos)

• Great Plains: a ramp of flat-lying rocks (Clovis, Carlsbad, Tucumcari, Artesia, Roswell)

Sandias and Albuquerque Classic Basin and Range landscape

Sandia Mountains

Albuquerque: a Basin city

Las Cruces: a Basin city

Las Cruces and Organ Mountains

Sugarloaf Peak

Sugarloaf Peak

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Sacramento Mountains Sierra Blanca – 12,003’

Pyramid Mountains South of Lordsburg

Animas Mountains In New Mexico’s “Bootheel”

Diamond A Ranch 500 square miles in the Bootheel

Malpai Borderlands

Classic Basin and Range

Jaguars in Peloncillo Mountains NM Bootheel

Mogollon/Gila

Volcanic Mountains and Broad Valleys

Mogollon-Datil Volcanic Field Gila Mountains Region

Gila Mountains

Gila Wilderness

Created in 1924

Aldo Leopold Helped created Gila Wilderness, 1924

Leopold’s “Land Ethic”

• “A thing is right when it tends to

preserve the integrity, stability, and

beauty of the biotic community; it is

wrong when it tends otherwise”

Wilderness Act of 1964

• President Johnson signs the law

Increase in Wilderness Areas

Gila Cliff Dwellings Volcanic Rock

Very Large Array (VLA) telescope

Plains of San Agustin

Montosa Ranch West of Magdalena

Volcanic Activity in Southern

NM

Border of Gila Volcanics

and Colorado Plateau

Malpais lava flows

Rio Grande Rift Valley Rift = a structural tear in Earth’s crust

Rio Grande Rift

Rio Grande Rift Crust stretches and lava pours out

Lava Flows in Rio Grande Rift Carrizozo, NM

Lava flows

White

Sands

Rio Grande Gorge, Taos

Rio Grande Rift, Taos

Other “rift valleys”

Jordan River into Africa

Rift Valley in Jordan

Dead Sea

“Great Rift Valley” Africa

Mount Kilimanjaro volcano

Picacho Peak and Rio Grande

Las Cruces

Colorado Plateau

Colorado Plateau

Goosenecks of the San Juan River

Navajo Reservation

Window Rock – Navajo Nation

Shiprock – Navajo Nation

A volcanic “neck”

Great Plains Flat lying sediments, rivers flow east

Great Plains Province

East-sloping ramp of sediments

The Great Plains in NM

Llano Estacado

“The Staked Plains”

The Great Plains

Ranch near Raton

Dust Bowl – 1930s

Ogallala Aquifer “Fossil Groundwater” being pumped for irrigation

Guadalupe Mountains At edge of Great Plains

Southern Rocky Mountains (SRM)

Rockies are smaller than they seem

New Mexico Rockies

• Sangre de Cristo Mountains

• Jemez Mountains

• Southern San Juan Mountains

Southern Rocky Mountains:

Sangre de Cristo Range

Wheeler Peak

Highest peak in NM: 13,141’

Wheeler Peak

Truchas Peak

Santa Fe Baldy

Blue Lake Sacred part of Taos Pueblo Lands

Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Taos

Jemez Mountains Valles Volcanic Caldera

Valles Caldera New Mexico’s Yellowstone

Valles Caldera National Preserve

Elk in Valles Caldera

Redondo Peak Sacred to Jemez Pueblo

Watersheds: Define the Continental Divide

Watersheds of New Mexico

Rio Grande Headwaters San Juan Mountains, Colorado

Rio Grande Taos Box Canyon

Rio Grande south of Taos

Cochiti Lake (a reservoir)

Rio Grande

Albuquerque

Elephant Butte Reservoir Water source for Mesilla Valley farms

Rio Grande

Southern New Mexico

Pecos River Headwaters in Sangre de Cristo Range

Bosque Redondo

Navajo Internment

Pecos River Christmas in Carlsbad

Pecos River in Texas

San Juan River

“Goosenecks of the San Juan”

Aerial View of the Goosenecks River meanders incised in solid rock

Gila River

“The Catwalk”

Gila River

Gila River often dries up in Arizona

Canadian River Flowing east, into the Great Plains

New Mexico

is arid

• Except in

the

mountains

Orographic Precipitation Why mountains are wetter

Orographic Precipitation in Cascades

Windward wet side and Leeward dry side

Mount Taylor, NM “Sky Island” of wet environments

Compare

landforms

and

precipitation

But why is so much of

New Mexico arid?

• Hadley Cell

– Sinking air is common at about 30 degrees

North and South latitude

– Sinking air creates high pressure and

warming air = little rain

– Air needs to be lifted and cooled to create rain

• Orographic Precipitation and Rain

Shadow effect

– Much of New Mexico is in the “rain shadow” of

high mountain ranges: little rain falls

Factor #1: Hadley Cell Sinking air at 30 degrees latitude

• Sinking air heats = less rainfall = aridity

Las Cruces Arid Climate

• 8” of rain per year

• “Arizona Monsoon” – July, August, September

– 5-6 inches of rain fall during summer months

– Largest Monsoon in world history was in India,

1861 – 1,080” = 90 feet of rain!

• 350 sunny days per year in Las Cruces

“Arizona Monsoon” Summer Rain dominant in NM

What causes a “Monsoon?”

 Intense summer heat causes air to rise across NM During summer this force is stronger than the sinking

air created by the Hadley Cell.

Rising air creates “Low Pressure.”

 Moist air drawn in from Pacific Ocean, Gulf of Mexico

Moist air arrives and is lifted by heating in NM.

Thunderstorms and heavy rain created.

In Fall, temperatures drop and the Monsoon ends.

 This same force operates in India and other classic

Monsoonal climates

New Mexico’s

Strong Spring Winds

• What causes it?

• Effects?

• Dr. Wright has formally proposed an

official name for this wind.

Toponomy Naming places

• Spatial folklore

• Cultural narratives

• Psychological adaptation

• Social conflicts

• Historical geography

• Place formation

• Contested land tenure

• Racism

• Humor

“Black Mesa”

San Ildefonso Pueblo, NM

• Tsahveeyo

– Pueblo narrative: evil giant who ate

children

• Gigantes

– Spanish narrative: co-opting a Native one

• Black Mesa

– Anglo narrative: captures the look, but no

more

Naming the Wind

• Santa Ana

– Hot dry katabatic winds in California

• Joan Didion

• Raymond Chandler

• Steely Dan

• Santana

Naming the Wind

• Euros

– Greek name for easterlies

• Aeolius

– Greek motherland of storms

• Mistral

– Cold northerlies in France

Naming the Wind

• Middle East/North Africa – Hot dry summer winds

• Sirocco

• Khamsin

• Ghibli

• Haboob (Egypt and Arizona)

• Harmattan

• Nashi

• Sharan

• Sharki

• Sharav

The Southwest’s Spring Wind

• March begins this “extra season” – Southwest is the dustiest region in North America

– Spring windstorms help define the region geographically

• 1,100 “notable” dust storms between 1932 and 2015 – Visibility less than 10 Km for 2 hours or more

• Cause: – eastward traveling cold fronts

– bends in the jet stream followed by strong high altitude winds that turn southward

– fierce when the spiral is centered in northern NM, the “Albuquerque Low” sucks air in from Mexico

Typical 500 hPa geopotential height (gpm/10) anomaly showing

steepening pressure gradient and resulting SW winds around an

“Albuquerque Low” pressure center

Choosing a Name

• The Southwest is strongly tri-cultural

– Native American

– Hispanic

– Anglo

• All have various names for wind

• Yet, no name for the Spring wind

Native American Names

• 21 Pueblo Nations in the Southwest – Beliefs that wind brings disease, miscarriage,

ethical lessons, a pantheon of spirits

• Diné (Navajo) – Male and female winds, sacred or profane,

harmful or problem-solving, Dark Wind, Blue Wind

• Apache Nations – Complex ethno-linguistic meaning of place

names

Spanish Names

• El Diablo in California

• Literature review and 26 years of asking people in the region reveals that there is no shared name in Spanish for the spring wind in the Southwest

• Dr. Patricia McGregor-Mendoza, a linguist at NMSU consulted

Anglo Names

• Only Dust Bowl names have been widely used

– Dusters

– Black Blizzards

– Black Rollers

• None of these names are tied to the Spring winds of the Southwest

El Cabrón

• A range of meanings in Mexican,

Chicano, Hispano, Tejano slang

– Old Goat

– Bastard

– S.O.B.

• El Cabrón is a crude choice, but let me

explain

Rationale

• No Native American name emerged or

felt appropriate

– These cultures have been abused and

commodified for centuries

• Choosing or making up a name in

English would send a message of

marginalization to the “minorities” of

the Southwest

Why a Spanish Name?

• Spanish links Native Americans,

Hispanics, and Anglos in diverse ways

– Indians used Spanish as a lingua franca

during the 1680 Pueblo Revolt

– Many Spanish speaking Indians today

– Indians with Spanish surnames

– Anglos born to the region acquire some

Spanish

– In New Mexico, Hispanics are the majority

Etymology

• Cabra

– Spanish for goat

• Spain

– Descuernacabras

• “wind that de-horns goats”

– Matacabras

• “wind that kills goats”

The Deeper Meaning

• The spring wind frustrates and angers people – It destroys plans, makes us sick, damages

crops and property, causes auto accidents, erodes soils, and generally wreaks havoc

• Puns, wordplay, double meanings, and making light of what is heavy are important coping mechanism of all cultures facing the challenges of land and life in the Southwest – El Dia de los Muertos: confronting death

– Sacred Clowns in somber Pueblo ceremonies

The Role for Playfulness

• The Southwest is a place of intense conflicts over land tenure

– Pueblo, Athabaskan, Spanish, Mexican, American

– U.S.-Mexico Border immigration and trade conflicts

• A place of cumulative occupance

• The pain of these cultural and geo-political collisions still burns across the region

Proposed region of El Cabrón

El Cabrón as Adaptation

• Curse and smile at the dusty wind

• Stubborn pride in a rite of passage

• Wise humor about surviving tough times

• A reminder – perhaps summer rains will bring relief on the other side – all troubles pass – Impermanence

An Arid Message of Mortality

• “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust”

Four Deserts of North America

Chihuahuan Desert

• Summer rain dominant

– “Arizona Monsoon”

• Winter storm fronts provide 35% of

precipitation

• Soaptree Yucca and grasslands

– Much is now creosote bush/mesquite

scrub

• Named for Mexican State of Chihuahua

Chihuahuan Desert

Chihuahuan Desert Grassland/scrub mix

Soaptree Yucca Signature plant of the Chihuahuan Desert

Oryx

from

Africa

at WSMR

White Sands National Monument World’s largest gypsum sand dune field (Erg)

Otero Mesa Grasslands

Pronghorn

Antelope

Creosote bush Grows in all U.S. deserts but the Great Basin

“King Clone” 11,700 year old creosote bush ring

in Mojave Desert in California

New Mexico A “Terrain Analog”

• “Terrain Analog” means a landscape

that is very similar to other landscapes

in the world

• New Mexico contains terrain analogs

for arid environments in the Middle

East and North Africa

Which landscapes are in NM

and which are not?

Iraq Plane Buried in the Desert

New Mexico Desert Analog

Afghanistan New Mexico

Ruins of Babylon, Iraq

Aztec Ruins Monument, NM

Flashflood in Arroyo

Learning Objectives

 Physiographic Provinces of New Mexico

 Be able to draw boundaries and know the landforms

 Patterns of aridity in NM

 Orographic Precipitation and “Sky Islands”

 Arizona Monsoon – why does it happen?

 The Spring Wind of the Southwest (name for it?)

 Chihuahuan Desert

 Be able to draw the boundary and know ecological traits

 Terrain Analog

 Be able to define and give examples