New Mexico Geological Society Annual Spring Meeting — Abstracts

Seismicity within the central New Mexico, USA region is dominated by deformation processes associated with the Socorro Magma Body (SMB), a large mid-crustal continental magma body at 19-km depth within the Rio Grande Rift. Seismicity has been monitored in this region for decades by a permanent short period network operated by New Mexico Tech, and the resulting catalogs show long-term seismic activity punctuated by discrete earthquake swarms. Waveform characteristics, notably the observation of reflected phases arising from the magma body recorded on this sparse network, led to the discovery of the SMB and estimates of its spatial extent. Here I provide an overview of the seismic observations made with the permanent seismic network, as well as more recent temporary deployments. This includes analysis of the long-term seismicity patterns, including spatial and temporal variations in earthquake swarms, earthquake depth distributions, as well as a review of the observations used to assess spatial extent of the magma body at depth.