9/28/2021

Earth Fissures in Queen Creek

While looking up information on geological formations of Arizona I stumbled on a map overlay for google earth that shows the location of known surface fissures in Arizona.
 
The nearest fissure to me that would be easy to get to is at  33.207964°,-111.728298°
But as you can see the top 90% of the area has been bulldozed flat recently for houses.
So we went to a different location located at:  33.200071°,-111.618853°
here is the google earth view with the overlay:
Those black areas that look like holes in the ground...


Are indeed holes in the ground, approximately 10 to 15 foot deep. It's hard to tell because we did not want to get too close to the edge lest the sides cave in.
What causes them? one theory is excessive pumping of ground water.
More information can be found here,  the map overlay can be got here.