The Valles Caldera
by Jon Burch Photography
Title
The Valles Caldera
Artist
Jon Burch Photography
Medium
Photograph - Digital Capture/faa Watermark Will Not Be On Your Finished Photograph.
Description
Valles Caldera is a wide volcanic caldera in the Jemez Mountains near the town of Los Alamos, New Mexico. Hot springs, streams, fumaroles, natural gas seeps and volcanic domes dot the caldera floor landscape. The highest point in the caldera is Redondo Peak, a resurgent lava dome located entirely within the caldera. Much of the caldera is within the Valles Caldera National Preserve, a unit of the National Park System.
About one million years ago, this valley was formed by surface collapse, after a series of tremendous volcanic eruptions ejected a volume of material more than 500 times greater than the May 1982 eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington. This collapse climaxed more than 13 million years of volcanism in the Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico.
Liquid magma, erupting as recently as 50,000 years ago formed the relatively small foreground hill and the higher ground on the distant skyline to form the enormous Valles Caldera. This heat from young volcanism created enough geothermal energy to push up this small dome to the left of the image named Cerro la Jara.
Use of Valles Caldera dates back to the prehistoric times: spear points dating to 11,000 years ago have been discovered. Several Native American tribes frequented the caldera, often seasonally for hunting and for obsidian, used for spear and arrow points. Obsidian from the caldera was traded by tribes across much of the Southwest. Eventually, Spanish and Mexican settlers as well as the Navajo and other tribes came to the caldera seasonally for grazing with periodic clashes and raids. Later as the United States acquired New Mexico as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the caldera became the backdrop for the Indian wars with the U.S Army. Around the same time, the commercial use of the caldera for ranching, and its forest for logging began.
Some digital effects were applied to the original image after the photograph was made. No electrons were harmed during the transition. Ordered images will not contain the FAA watermark
Image copyright 2017 Jon Burch Photography all rights reserved.
Uploaded
March 28th, 2017
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