COLORES | Sleeping Monsters, Sacred Fires: Volcanos Of New Mexico | New Mexico PBS

whether you know it or not you could play I Spy something volcanic all day on New Mexico's highways for tens of millions of years Mother Earth spewed molten rock and ash across the state like confetti and a Macy's Thanksgiving Parade look in practically any direction and you'll see the results of eons of geologic decorating craters cinder cones lava flows and mountains that have blown their tops take the asphalt less traveled and instead of the usual roadside attractions and rattlesnake museums you might find yourself on what looks like an abandoned set with the Lord of the Rings look more closely in the volcanic terrain reveals stories of creation homes for ancient man and the history of other planets but don't be fooled by our Placid panoramas keep in mind New Mexico's volcanoes are only hibernating so a big question remains when and where will they erupt again welcome to the volcano State although the states volcanic activity goes back hundreds of millions of years it was about 65 million years ago that these leviathans assured out the age of dinosaurs where the ground once rumbled in New Mexico from plotting seismosaurus it now heaved as the sleeping monsters awakened from beneath about 20 million years ago the Golden Age of volcanism began when the crust beneath New Mexico started to stretch and pull apart along a north-south axis forming what we know is the Rio Grande rift a geologic feature found in only a handful of places around the world as the crust pulled apart land in the middle sank while the rift pushed up the crust on either side creating several distinct mountain ranges most notably the Sandia's and a wide valley that extends from southern Colorado to El Paso the rift allowed magma to rise to the surface along its length and volcanoes erupted like firecrackers a few million years later volcanoes again remodeled New Mexico's landscape along another weakness in the crust known as the hey Mazz lineaments running roughly northeast to southwest that sculpted some of our most famous volcanic features from Zuni Salt Lake to Mount Taylor and Cabazon to Capulin in fact there are more than a dozen distinct volcanic fields within the states borders featuring well-preserved examples of every type of volcano known and reminding us that geology is destiny one thing about volcanoes is that people are tremendously fascinated by them and most geologic processes happen over hundreds thousands millions of years whereas volcanoes happen fast and most cultures in places where there are active volcanism have some kind of deity associated with the volcano they make offerings to the volcano and it's really it's it's something that in trances people and having been around active volcanoes I can completely understand that because they're so dynamic they're almost like a living thing the Akal of people like almost all Native American people hold this o the land in really high reverence because it is part of it sustains us really so it is part of just as important or if not more important than we are we know that the earth is is very much alive it is it's changing and it's constantly doing things that are reshaping itself and its surface in a creation story when we talk about the mountains being formed this earth was flat and there was no mountains river hills of such and since the ocean could also become as high as it could be then the mountains had to be formed to protect like the walls of the home to feel safe in the akima culture volcanoes are the sacred portals through which the fire spirits travel returning periodically to the Earth's surface to remind the people of their great power the reminder left at the intersection of the Rio Grande rift and the hey Mazz lineaments hoon be forgotten that's where the hey Mazz mountains formed the most famous geography in the state and the cradle for our very own supervolcano what makes the vias caldera so spectacular geologically and scenically is because they're formed in the top of a big mountain range mountain range made of the coalesced slopes and peaks of a more than a dozen volcanoes volcanic history and the heimeau's mountains began long before the Cavalia is caldera form first eruptions occurred here more than 15 million years ago and so much of what we see here behind us are the rocks that were produced by those earlier eruptions lava flows and layers of pumice and ash that accumulated on the landscape and built up the mountains before the valley is called air warm down fast forwarding to approximately 1.6 and 1.2 million years ago the vias caldera was the epicentre of two massive volcanic eruptions that left deposits several hundred feet deep in the surrounding area the most recent eruption emitted an astounding 300 cubic kilometers of molten rock and debris before collapsing into the vacated magma chamber leaving a depression 12 miles wide that can be clearly seen from space well the type of eruption that happened at the volumes caldera are impossible to imagine the ground probably shook for months earthquakes every day there might have been smoking ground but once the crack opened and the volcano really got going it started with a blast a huge huge crack of thunder magnified thousands and millions of times the initial blast sent out a shock wave so powerful it compressed air to the temperature of between 400 and 500 degrees simultaneously leveling forests and incinerating trees but that was just the beginning huge toxic steam clouds billowed from the volcano's mouth skyrocketing some 30 miles into the stratosphere within minutes chunks of pumice rained down the column eventually collapsed under its own weight and crashed to earth sending superheated and ash diamond gas racing across the countryside at supersonic speeds and forming the dramatic mesas of the bandolier tough eruptions may have continued for weeks many of us remember the destruction wrought when Mount st. Helens erupted in 1980 but scientists believe the eruptions of the vyas caldera were up to 250 times more powerful amazingly the vias caldera isn't even the largest caldera in the state that title goes to a collection of calderas in southwestern New Mexico that are some of the biggest in the solar system debris carried aloft by the ash clouds can be confirmed as far east as Kansas Oklahoma and Texas and some scientists speculate ash may have reached the east coast well let's believe the dust cloud would have blocked out the Sun over much of the United States for years and altered the world's climate this will happen again perhaps not at the values but it's a mother volcano here in the West and when it does it will truly stop life as we know it after the last big eruption magma continued to bubble for centuries beneath the caldera pushing up the crust to form Redondo Peak occasionally lava erupted to the surface creating the ring of volcanic domes inside the caldera walls the most recent eruption is believed to have occurred a mere 40,000 years ago resulting in the cliffs of battleship Rock for all the destruction left behind by volcanism eruptions provided the building blocks for civilizations from obsidian quarries to Salt Lake's that became a destination for generations of native peoples just southeast of the vias caldera sits the remarkable Bandelier National Monument the site of saenko e mesa and frijoles Canyon well no one would have wanted to be in the area when the caldera erupted it was a different story a million or so years later the resulting mesas of volcanic tuff or compressed ash and dust provided fixer-upper homes the ancestors of the San Ildefonso Pueblo were the first to build subdivisions at saenko II later the ancestors of the San Felipe Santo Domingo and Cochiti Pueblo carved out Casas in the sight of frijoles Canyon these candidates are remarkably well-preserved this this room was probably 500 600 years old or so and this plaster this mud plaster that we're looking at this is original above that you see the ceiling is blackened putting a layer of almost a creosote like material and what that does is that it seals the ceiling and prevents the stone from dusting on you at nearby frijoles Canyon there are 1,100 excavated caves in a mile and a half stretch talk about urban density the caves were multi-story with walled additions made out of blocks of volcanic tuff harvested from the Mesa tops many were designed to support looms nothing like working at home in places such as petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque ancestors of today's Pablo's and tribes acknowledged the sacredness of their relationship with Mother Earth by creating a library of images carved on basalt about 150,000 years ago a series of six volcanic eruptions punched through the Earth's crust along Albuquerque's western horizon the magma poured out over softer sandy alluvial soils and then hardened and over the course of the last hundred thousand years the sandy soils eroded underneath leaving a cap rock of basalt which came tumbling down what we've got here at petroglyph National Monument is a 17 mile long volcanic escarpment on which we've got over 20,000 images carved by the ancestors of today's Pueblo people and also by other Native Americans traveling through the area such as the Apache and the Navajo for several thousand years the volcanoes have been a very very important part of the Pueblo people's cultural landscape in fact this is the middle of the Pueblo universe some of the native people believe that this is a place where their ancestors have passed from this world to the next world since we are we are Pueblo people that believe we came from inside the ground any kind of passageway back to that underworld where we all came from is important place for us Appler important place to to put our prayers to get sent back to where we where we all came from while most of the states volcanic activity dates to prehistoric times the El Malpais National Monument near Grant's and the Carrizozo Malpass in south-central New Mexico are carpeted with lava flows just a few thousand years old the term Malpass means badlands and was used by Spanish explorers and travelers to describe jagged lava flows that not only made travel arduous but were hell on shoe leather and beasts of burden there's been several flows that have been out in this area already and I'm pretty sure even some of my ancestors may have been witness to some of that we are standing on the youngest volcanic eruption in New Mexico it's dated at around three thousand years three thousand years that's younger than the Great Pyramids of Egypt a blink of the eye in geologic time and it means that people were here in New Mexico and probably saw this eruption happening another really cool thing about these lava flows is that you can see lots of gas bubbles and those gas bubbles are really going to be useful perhaps for understanding the ancient climate of Mars geologically New Mexico and Mars really aren't that far apart people both have large long lava flows Maur type volcanoes large cold eras and the high dry arid environment of Mars very similar New Mexico's so fact is that we can actually learn a lot about the conditions of volcanism on Mars by studying volcanoes and volcanic rocks right here in New Mexico some of our history about this is a really a cultural history story about the lava flow there used to be a supernatural being that lived in this area and he was just not one of the more friendly guys and he was always tricking people and and killing a lot of people and the these between heroes wanted to try and save the akima people from this supernatural being this is a Hawaiian style lava flow it's a very passive style of volcanic eruption and the event for this flow the place where the lava came up through the Earth's crust is defined by a little cinder cone that's at the north end of the flow you can just see it on the horizon these lava flows are very fluid so they would have been about the consistency of molasses so it would have just been losing along to the Earth's surface and this is a very long flow it's about 70 kilometers long one of his technique was to gamble with the people and these boy toons found out the secrets of this being so when they finally got here they wagered with him and and he being really confident about his wagering skills knew that he would easily win anything that these hero twins had so they kept upping the ante and pretty soon it was up to their lives let's wager your lives and they said well you need to wager something as important as our lives if we're going to wager and and at the story that I've heard is he wagers his eyes and in the end the guys knew all his tricks and they won the wager and they took his eyes as the lava flowed along the surface a crust would have formed over the top of the lava and then the lava would have ended up flowing basically through a tunnel and that tunnel would have allowed the lava to be insulated so it didn't cool off and freeze as fast as it would if it hadn't had this tube system to transport it this is the roof of the lava tube so when this tube was active this part would have been solid rock and then where I'm standing there would have been hot lava flowing actually this direction flowing from the vent down towards the end when the supply of lava was cut off at the vent this tube eventually would have emptied out and when that happened the roof of the tube which wasn't very strong would have collapsed down to form all this rubble you see all over the floor this supernatural being this deity that lived in this area was very upset she said I can't see to go after these people so I'm gonna do something terrible to them and he build this huge ol fire and he started boiling this pine tar and the story goes on to say is that's how a lot of this pine tar which is what what we see right now is the lava field came flowing from his his cauldron and trying to head its way toward akima to annihilate other fields and all the animals and even the people what we're looking at here are called pahoehoe ropes the features that we're seeing on this surface and these are features that form only on the most fluid types of lava when you have the upper surface it's cooling and lava flowing underneath it it rumbles up the upper surface forming these ropes and a way that you can weather you can picture that happening is if you have a rug on a hard floor and you push the rug from one end it forms wrinkles that look actually a lot like these ropes so if you had been here on this island at the time that the eruption was happening you probably would have been ok you would have been maybe a little bit hot but you you could have actually walked right up to the edge of the flow without being hurt the majestic profile of Mount Taylor looks down upon travelers along i-40 near Grant's it's a sacred mountain for many Native Americans and for scientists a classic example of a composite volcano built from hundreds of different types of eruptions that began about three million years ago it's very similar to the type of volcano that people think of and in fact Mount the Tingler probably had eruptions that were very similar to the eruptions that we are familiar with from Mount st. Helens very explosive so Mel Taylor probably originally had a more conical shape than it does today but we don't know what it really looked like but let's let's imagine that it was like Mount Saint Helens was before it had its big top blowing or eruption so originally it could have actually swooped up and down to the other side and sort of this a classic volcano shape while Mount Taylor rose into the sky eruptions at Kilbourne hole near las cruces about 180 thousand years ago had the opposite effect creating what ken will let's calls a negative volcano or Mar volcano they are rare except in New Mexico where examples abound this crater extends over a mile and a half towards north and it's over a mile wide at its middle part and maar volcano forms in a very unique fashion it forms by large steam explosions now the steam explosions here were caused by rising magma hitting groundwater causing the groundwater to flash into steam in large explosions now when I say large I really mean large this crater gives evidence of explosions being up to as many as 50 times larger than the explosions over Hiroshima the mantle of the earth is very far away from us it's over 20 miles below our feet here yet this volcano acted in such a way that it really grabbed hold of that and brought that mantle right to the surface and these are chunks of the mantle they're composed of olivine which is the lighter green and pyroxene which is the darker green almost black color fortunately the earth beneath New Mexico coughed up more than rare green rocks in fact volcanoes have been one of our leading economic development tools leaving vast mineral deposits of turquoise gold and copper for prospectors volcanic rich soil for farmers and ranchers not to mention fabulous scenery to lure tourists but what everyone wants to know is when the next one is going to blow volcanism in New Mexico is dormant not extinct continuous over tens of millions of years there's no reason to think it stopped magically 3,000 years ago experts differ on the timetable for the state's next eruption but based on history one researcher predicts a 1% chance in the next 100 years a 10% chance in the next thousand it could be a sedate lava flow or a catastrophic explosion Miglia Dunbar is putting her money on the Socorro magma body in sexual New Mexico between about Bernardo and Socorro there's geophysical evidence that there's a body of molten rock or magma at about 19 kilometers depth and if you had to predict where the next volcanic eruption in New Mexico might occur that would be a good choice if I had to guess I might predict that it would be an eruption just like this eruption this basaltic eruption of the Carrizozo Malpais most geologists are excited at the prospect what wouldn't I give to see that happen in New Mexico it would be this is a big topic of conversation among volcanologists in the state is when is the next eruption going to happen and where is it going to be and won't it be great when it happens it may be that we should should think of the scenic landforms that are represented by volcanoes in New Mexico as as sleeping monsters volcanoes that may awaken in the future or new volcanoes it may appear in places where we haven't seen them in the past when artists speak of New Mexico they frequently refer to the unique lighting the color the shapes of the landscape and sort of an indefinable spirit of the landscape I like to think that because volcanoes are such an important part of what we see out of our front windows that they're really responsible for some of that uniqueness these mountains and the volcanoes remains are important to us because it tells us the stories of what happened in the past and where we going to go from here and it's a reminder to us through the stories that these certain things had happened and it will occur even today in in the future this Caloris is available on home video to order call 1-800 three two eight five six six three this program made possible with major funding from the Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management sustaining the diversity of public lands for present and future generations and a challenge cost-share grant from the National Park Service through the petroglyph national monument with additional funding from the Santa Fe Garden Club a member of the Garden Club of America and the New Mexico Geological Society Foundation

Channel: knmedotorg

Views: 82,763

Rating: 4.8513932 out of 5

Keywords: documentary, New Mexico, KNME, PBS, NM, Tony de la Flora, John Britt, volcano

Id: QfLHmL0oKtw

Length: 25min 58sec (1558 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 15 2009