About the Cover
The southerly flowing Rio Grande roughly bisects New Mexico and is shown near Pilar, which is 60 km north of Santa Fe, site of the 2008 SSA Annual Meeting to be held 16-18 April. Its course is controlled by the Cenozoic mid-continental Rio Grande rift, where the North American lithosphere thins, exhibiting crustal extension and associated magmatism. Near Pilar the river follows an active transfer fault connecting the San Luis and Espanola structural basins, which form part of the southeastern boundary of the Colorado Plateau. In the background are rocks of Proterozoic age bounding the volcanic Taos Plateau. Blocks of Pliocene Servilleta basalt, seen on the left, have tumbled from the plateau surface to the river. Most earthquakes in New Mexico occur within the rift near Socorro (200 km southwest of Santa Fe), where an inflating mid-crustal magma body generates swarms of microearthquakes. Photo courtesy of Geraint Smith, Taos, New Mexico (www.geraintsmith.com).
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Copyright © 2008 by Seismological Society of America
