Principal Investigator: Chester J. Weiss (505-284-6347)

Co-investigator: John Hawley (505-255-4847), Hawley Geomatters

Sponsor: New Mexico Small Business Assistance (NMSBA) Program

Duration: (CY)2005-2007

Description: The industry group requesting assistance is composed of a collection of landowners from the Estancia Basin (Bernalillo, Santa Fe, and Torrance Counties) in the agriculture and ranching industry. The future of this industry in the area is strongly dependent upon a sensible water-usage policy, a fact which has motivated various recent studies of the region's groundwater resources. Notably absent from the various studies is the use of geophysical exploration techniques. In particular, electromagnetic methods are widely known to be well-suited to groundwater exploration in ecologically sensitive areas such as producing agriculture fields. This group seeks support from Sandia National Laboratories to conduct an electromagnetic survey over selected sites in the Estancia Basin impacted by the agriculture and ranching business and overlying groundwater resources which are either characteristic of the region in their complexity or atypical, and thus, challenging to current models of groundwater flow, recharge and quality.

Papers, reports and the latest hot results:

Estancia Basin Regional Map (265MB): SAND2005-3643P.pdf