Soil-geomorphic and Paleoclimatic Characteristics of the Fort Bliss Maneveur Areas, Southern New Mexico and Western Texas

TitleSoil-geomorphic and Paleoclimatic Characteristics of the Fort Bliss Maneveur Areas, Southern New Mexico and Western Texas
Publication TypeReport
Year of Publication1993
AuthorsMonger CH
Date Published1993
InstitutionCultural Resources Branch, Environmental Management Division, Directorate of Environment, U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery Center
CityFort Bliss, Texas
ISBN NumberHistoric and Natural Resources Report No. 10
Call Number00643
Keywordsbook, books, chapter, chapters, climate,paleoclimate, geomorphology, carbonates, paleoclimate, pollen,fossil, report, reports
Abstract By the early Quaternary period (2 million years ago) the ancestral Rio Grande had spilled through Fillmore Pass between the Organ and Franklin Mountains and was filling the Hueco Bolson with river sediments (Hawley et al., 1969). By middle Pleistocene, when the ancestral Rio Grande entrenched into its modern valley (400 to 300 ka, Gile et al., 1981), it had been diverted back to the west of the Franklin Mountains, probably as the result of uplifting of the Organ-Franklin Mountain chain (Seager 1981). Since the mid-Pleistocene, landscape evolution on Fort Bliss has been restricted mainly to (1) alluvial fan deposition, (2) land displacement along faults, and (3) eolian activity. Alluvial fan depositon has invlolved at least four generations of alluvial fans on the piedmont aprons that skirt the mountains. The fans range in age from approximately 400 ka to the present arroyo mouth deposits. Land displacment along faults has occurred throughout the late Pleistocene and Holocene. Sediments that fill linear depresson caused by extensional faulting are the result of both tectonic movement and climatically driven sedimentiation that presumably corresponds to periods of aridity. Eolian activity has modified existing soil strata in areas that were not sheltered from wind erosion by desert pavement, vegetation, or younger deposits. Most of the soilscape on Fort Bliss has experienced multiple periods of deflation and reburial by locally derived eolian sediments. There are at least four eolian deposits in the basin floor that range in age from early Holocene to Historical blowsand deposits.