More recently, I've used the Bitter Creek scar to illustrate different lidar terrain modeling tools relevant to debris flow studies. Modern lidar makes a big difference! I'll also include the Red River flows in a NM geohazards overview paper I've been asked to write but haven't even started.

Not the road to damnation, just the road to a dam. Costilla Dam, at 9400 ft (2900 m) in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico. The right abutment of the dam, originally built 1916-20, is in a now-stabilized large landslide reactivated during dam reconstruction in the late ‘80s.

Morning hike along the rim of the Rio Grande Gorge, Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, New Mexico.

Looks like there has been a swarm of small to moderate earthquakes west of Raton during the past week, most likely triggered by deep injection of oilfield wastewater (aka produced water), not fracking or extraction per se. Here's a screen capture of the past week's activity:

Moonrise and evening alpenglow, Mount Shasta, California. Not bad for an iPhone photo through a car window at 100+ km/hr (I wasn’t driving).

Here's a larger scope InSAR map comparing the three irrigated fields near the data center in the far SE corner (the dark blue dots just SW of Santa Teresa) and the Mimbres Basin south of Deming in the western part of the image (diffuse blue area) where total subsidence has likely been 1 m to 2 m.

We've been having a swarm of small earthquakes above the northern edge of the mid-crustal Socorro magma body in New Mexico. I plotted epicenters and magnitudes from the NM Bureau of Geology and Quaternary fault traces from the USGS (but couldn't find a GIS-ready magma body outline). ⚒️

Albuquerque nightscape with city lights and clouds.

I make mental notes for future reference but my mental notes aren’t any better organized than my physical notes, sometimes misplaced, overlooked, or forgotten. It helps to occasionally run through the most important of them in my mind.

Bison enchiladas made with homemade red chile and blue corn tortillas; cotija cheese on top and a pot of pinto beans on the stove. It’ll do for a Tuesday night.

Hazel’s been gone six months now and I still expect to see her walking around the corner.

Cinco de Mayo seems mostly an over-commercialized reason to sell beer and tequila to Americans, but I’m not one to pass up any excuse for a homemade enchilada: New Mexico style stacked, chicken, red chile and blue corn tortillas, with a fried egg on top and calabacitas on the side.

Clearing skies after a passing cold front and overnight rain. You know the geology by now: erosional remnants of Pliocene rift-filling sedimentary rocks in the middle ground; Pleistocene-basalt-capped mesa in the distance. A down-to-east normal fault and geophysical anomaly between the two.

Wishing for rain, settling for the view. Dramatic desert sky above an alluvial plain and Pliocene erosional remnant hills; a rift-bounding range of Precambrian metamorphic rocks in the far distance.

Haven’t posted a New Mexico landscape photo in a while. This afternoon’s skies were dramatic, so here’s one looking across some Quaternary alluvial deposits towards a Pleistocene basalt-capped mesa underlain by Pliocene sedimentary rocks; Rio Grande rift bounding Sandia Mountains in the distance.

Six years ago today we began working from home for an uncertain length of time because of Covid. For me, it turned out to be 15 months. My first move: naming Hazel—in her Kentucky Wildcat blue collar—as my ad hoc acting associate director of the Kentucky Geological Survey for home office affairs.

The world is surely going to hell in a tortilla. At ABQ for a morning flight and despite the fact that there are TWO places where a hungry traveler can get a legit New Mexico breakfast burrito with red or green, carne adovada or Spam, smothered or not, and people are lined up at Dunkin’.

Not Scottish but James Hutton, the father of modern geology, was. Wouldn’t you know it, though, I’m out of sheep offal this weekend. So, here’s my Burns night dinner: homemade vegan haggis with whisky (cashew) cream sauce, tatties, and shredded Brussels sprouts with a warming dram of Laphroaig.

Just another Tucson—not tequila—sunrise.

Cacti and sky, Sabino Canyon, Arizona.

Late afternoon landscape with clearing skies after a drizzly morning, Santa Catalina Mountains, Tucson, Arizona.

Here in Albuquerque, when we ask if you’d like red we do NOT mean a disgraced ex-sheriff MAGA bully mayoral candidate. Congratulations to Democrats @mayorkeller.bsky.social and my new District 1 city councilor Stephanie Telles!

Late afternoon, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Lots in the world has been going sideways lately but I am pleased with today’s iteration of my high-altitude rustic bread-baking experiments. Pushing the hydration up to 86% seems to be the trick. And, yes, you’re correct: That’s a bowl of bucatini with leftover venison bolognese for dinner.

A pleasant and unusually warm New Mexico autumn afternoon for a short hike. Looking eastward across the Albuquerque Basin from the Petroglyph National Monument volcanoes towards the faulted western face of Sandia Mountain along the eastern edge of the Rio Grande Rift.

A soup of sorts: odds and ends and produce about to perish. White beans and carrots and broccoli rabe and mustard greens and yellow tomato puree and herbs, with crusts of homemade bread and a ten-dollar Malbec to savor on the patio under a dark sky while listening to coyotes yip in the distance.

I love green chile as much as the next New Mexican but there’s nothing as perfect as a batch of red made from local pods and simmering on an almost frosty autumn morning (potatoes frying next pan over; eggs and goat cheese on deck for omelets).

Lots to bemoan these days but I am NOT complaining that it’s nearly November in New Mexico and I can still walk out to the garden, pick a handful of fresh green chiles, and roast them for breakfast each morning.

Kings? No. Homemade flour tortillas with eggs, cheese, and hot New Mexico green chiles from the garden? Yes!