Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (In-SAR) imaging of the central Rio Grande rift (New Mexico, USA) during 1992--1999 reveals a crustal uplift of several centimeters that spatially coincides with the seismologically determined outline of the Socorro magma body, one of the largest currently active magma intrusions in the Earth's continental crust. Modeling of interferograms shows that the observed deformation may be due to elastic opening of a sill-like intrusion at a rate of a few millimeters per year. Despite an apparent constancy of the geodetically determined uplift rate, thermodynamic arguments suggest that it is unlikely that the Socorro magma body has formed via steady state elastic inflation. ¿ 2001 American Geophysical Union