![El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/El_Pinacate_y_Gran_Desierto_de_Altar.png)
The Gran Desierto de Altar is one of the major sub-
ecoregion
An ecoregion (ecological region) or ecozone (ecological zone) is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a bioregion, which in turn is smaller than a biogeographic realm. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of ...
s of the
Sonoran Desert
The Sonoran Desert ( es, Desierto de Sonora) is a desert in North America and ecoregion that covers the northwestern Mexican states of Sonora, Baja California, and Baja California Sur, as well as part of the southwestern United States (in Ariz ...
, located in the
State of Sonora, in northwest
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
. It includes the only active
erg
The erg is a unit of energy equal to 10−7joules (100 nJ). It originated in the Centimetre–gram–second system of units (CGS). It has the symbol ''erg''. The erg is not an SI unit. Its name is derived from (), a Greek word meaning 'work' o ...
dune region in
North America. The desert extends across much of the northern border of the
Gulf of California
The Gulf of California ( es, Golfo de California), also known as the Sea of Cortés (''Mar de Cortés'') or Sea of Cortez, or less commonly as the Vermilion Sea (''Mar Bermejo''), is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Baja C ...
, spanning more than east to west and over north to south. It constitutes the largest continuous wilderness area within the Sonoran Desert.
The eastern portion of the area contains the volcanic
Pinacate Peaks region; together with the western portion, the area forms the
El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve and a
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
World Heritage Site
A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for h ...
.
Geography
![20091211 - Puerto Penasco -63](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/20091211_-_Puerto_Penasco_-63.jpg)
The Gran Desierto covers approximately , most of it in the Mexican state of Sonora. The northernmost edges reach across the international border into
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is a U.S. national monument and UNESCO biosphere reserve located in extreme southern Arizona that shares a border with the Mexican state of Sonora. The park is the only place in the United States where the ...
and
Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge
Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge (CPNWR) is located in southwestern Arizona in the United States, along of the Mexico–United States border. It is bordered to the north and to the west by the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range, to the s ...
in southwestern
Arizona
Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...
,
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
. The region is dominated by sand sheets and dunes ranging in thickness from less than to greater than . The total volume of sand in the Gran Desierto is about . Most of that volume was delivered by the
Colorado River
The Colorado River ( es, Río Colorado) is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The river drains an expansive, arid watershed that encompasses parts of seven U.S. s ...
during the
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...
, which flowed through the present-day Gran Desierto area approximately 120,000 years before present. This Pleistocene
delta
Delta commonly refers to:
* Delta (letter) (Δ or δ), a letter of the Greek alphabet
* River delta, at a river mouth
* D ( NATO phonetic alphabet: "Delta")
* Delta Air Lines, US
* Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19
Delta may also ...
migrated westward concomitant with
strike-slip faulting and
rift
In geology, a rift is a linear zone where the lithosphere is being pulled apart and is an example of extensional tectonics.
Typical rift features are a central linear downfaulted depression, called a graben, or more commonly a half-grabe ...
ing associated with the opening of the
Salton Trough
The Salton Trough is an active tectonic pull-apart basin, or graben. It lies within the Imperial, Riverside, and San Diego counties of southeastern California, United States and extends south of the Mexico–United States border into the stat ...
and the
Gulf of California
The Gulf of California ( es, Golfo de California), also known as the Sea of Cortés (''Mar de Cortés'') or Sea of Cortez, or less commonly as the Vermilion Sea (''Mar Bermejo''), is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Baja C ...
.
The eastern margin of the Gran Desierto abuts the
Cenozoic volcanic
A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface.
On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates a ...
complex of the
Sierra Pinacate
The Pinacate Peaks (Sierra Pinacate, ood, Cuk Doʼag) are a group of volcanic peaks and cinder cones located mostly in the Mexican state of Sonora along the international border adjacent to the U.S. state of Arizona, surrounded by the vas ...
, a composite volcanic field covering more than with a summit elevation of .
Aeolian sands have climbed onto many of the western slopes of the Sierra Pinacate, defining the eastern limit of the dune field. To the north, the sands thin out against the distal margins of
alluvial fan
An alluvial fan is an accumulation of sediments that fans outwards from a concentrated source of sediments, such as a narrow canyon emerging from an escarpment. They are characteristic of mountainous terrain in arid to semiarid climates, but a ...
s from the
Tinajas Altas
El Camino del Diablo (Spanish, meaning "The Devil's Highway"), also known as El Camino del Muerto, Sonora Trail, Sonoyta-Yuma Trail, Yuma-Caborca Trail, and Old Yuma Trail, is a historic road that passes through some of the most remote and inhos ...
and
Tule Mountains
The Tule Mountains is a mountain range in Yuma County, Arizona. There is a diverse flora and fauna population within the Tule Mountains; one of the notable trees found in this mountain range is the elephant tree (''Bursera microphylla
''Bursera ...
along the Arizona–Sonora border. The southern border of the sand sea is the northern shore of the Gulf of California.
The southernmost extension of the
San Andreas Fault
The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly through California. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is right-lateral strike-slip (horizonta ...
cuts across the area and lies beneath several prominent
granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...
inselberg
An inselberg or monadnock () is an isolated rock hill, knob, ridge, or small mountain that rises abruptly from a gently sloping or virtually level surrounding plain.
In Southern Africa a similar formation of granite is known as a koppie, a ...
s, most notably the Sierra del Rosario mountains, which are surrounded by the erg on all sides. The Sierra Enterrada is a smaller inselberg almost completely buried by the sand near the boundary of the Gran Desierto and the
Pinacate volcanic complex.
Sand dune distribution
The Gran Desierto is best known for its magnificent
star dunes, many in excess of high. More than two-thirds of the Gran Desierto is covered by sand sheets and sand streaks. The remaining area is split equally between a western population of star dunes and an eastern set of transverse or
crescentic dunes. Some of the larger crescentic dunes in the northeastern sand sea exhibit reversing crests, a transitional morphological feature associated with star dunes.
Flora
Vegetation assemblages of the Gran Desierto are typical of the lower Sonoran Desert with a marked difference in vegetation type and density with location. Large areas of the southern and eastern sand sea, especially near the margins, have a moderately dense (up to 20%) cover of perennial low shrubs and herbs such as bursage (''
Ambrosia dumosa
''Ambrosia dumosa'', the burro-weed or white bursage, a North American species of plants in the family Asteraceae. It is a common constituent of the creosote-bush scrub community throughout the Mojave desert of California, Nevada, and Utah and ...
'') and longleaf jointfir (''
Ephedra trifurca'') with creosote bush (''
Larrea tridentata
''Larrea tridentata'', called creosote bush and greasewood as a plant, chaparral as a medicinal herb, and ''gobernadora'' (Spanish for "governess") in Mexico, due to its ability to secure more water by inhibiting the growth of nearby plants. In S ...
'') in areas of thin sand cover.
Palo verde/
acacia/
ocotillo
''Fouquieria splendens'' (commonly known as ocotillo (), but also referred to as buggywhip, coachwhip, candlewood, slimwood, desert coral, Jacob's staff, Jacob cactus, and vine cactus) is a plant indigenous to the Sonoran Desert and Chihuahuan ...
communities occur on alluvial slopes on the northern side of the sand sea, particularly in
arroyos and washes. The region's estimated total vegetation cover is 15% in the star dunes and about 10% in the low transverse or crescentic dunes areas. These percentages are substantially greater than in most active dune fields, where vegetation covers of 15% are more typical.
Several teams have examined the
middens
A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofac ...
built by
pack rat
A pack rat or packrat, also called a woodrat or trade rat, are any species in the North and Central American rodent genus ''Neotoma''. Pack rats have a rat-like appearance, with long tails, large ears, and large, black eyes. Pack rats are notice ...
s as a proxy for ancient vegetation regimes.
[Van Devender, T.R. and Spaulding, W.G., Development of vegetation and climate in the southwestern United States, Science, 204, 701-710, 1979.] All have concluded that the Gran Desierto has been an ecological refuge for desert plants since at least the late Pleistocene. The Gran Desierto has served as a refuge for most dominant
Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert ( ; mov, Hayikwiir Mat'aar; es, Desierto de Mojave) is a desert in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the Southwestern United States. It is named for the indigenous Mojave people. It is located primarily ...
plant species during cooler pluvial epochs as well.
Carbon-14 dating
Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon.
The method was d ...
for a midden from the
Tinajas Altas Mountains
The Tinajas Altas Mountains (O'odham: Uʼuva:k or Uʼuv Oopad) are an extremely arid northwest–southeast trending mountain range in southern Yuma County, Arizona, approximately 35 mi southeast of Yuma, Arizona. The southern end of the range ...
shows assemblages of
juniper and
Joshua trees
''Yucca brevifolia'' is a plant species belonging to the genus ''Yucca''. It is tree-like in habit, which is reflected in its common names: Joshua tree, yucca palm, tree yucca, and palm tree yucca.
This monocotyledonous tree is native to the ar ...
coexisting with contemporary Gran Desierto flora and fauna more than 43,000 years before present.
Although midden studies do not provide information beyond the late Pleistocene, they do indicate that, in gross form, the climate of the Gran Desierto as recorded by plant communities has been desert-like since at least the peak of the
Wisconsinan glaciation.
Fauna
Climate
The Gran Desierto has a warm to hot
arid climate
The desert climate or arid climate (in the Köppen climate classification ''BWh'' and ''BWk''), is a dry climate sub-type in which there is a severe excess of evaporation over precipitation. The typically bald, rocky, or sandy surfaces in deser ...
. Mean annual rainfall, most of which occurs between September and December, is at
Puerto Peñasco
Puerto Peñasco ( ood, Geʼe Ṣuidagĭ) is a small city located in Puerto Peñasco Municipality in the northwest of the Mexican state of Sonora, from the border with the U.S. state of Arizona. According to the 2020 census, it has a population ...
, Sonora (located at the southeastern margin of the sand sea on the Gulf of California) and decreases northward toward
Yuma, Arizona
Yuma ( coc, Yuum) is a city in and the county seat of Yuma County, Arizona, United States. The city's population was 93,064 at the 2010 census, up from the 2000 census population of 77,515.
Yuma is the principal city of the Yuma, Arizona, M ...
(on the northwestern edge) to per year. Mid-summer highs in excess of are common in the central sand sea. Mid-winter lows of less than are rare. Winds are controlled in part by the position and strength of the
Sonoran Low in summer, creating southerly winds, and by the
Great Basin High in winter, with north-to-northeasterly winds.
Paleoclimate
The well-documented
pluvial
In geology and climatology, a pluvial is either a modern climate characterized by relatively high precipitation or an interval of time of variable length, decades to thousands of years, during which a climate is characterized by relatively high ...
epochs which occurred over much of the southwestern United States during the most-recent (
Wisconsin
Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...
)
ice age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gre ...
may not have extended as far south as the Gran Desierto.
It appears that the climatic regime of the past 150,000 years at this site has been one of gradually increasing aridity with current hyper-arid conditions being firmly in place by at least 43,000 years ago. As a minimum, it may be assumed that onshore coastal winds from the south were less important to sand movement when the Wisconsin shoreline was located seaward of its current position.
Geology
The geological history of the Gran Desierto is intimately linked to the opening of the Gulf of California and the capture of the ancestral Colorado River; source areas that were adjacent to the Gran Desierto have shifted in position, basement topography has been altered continuously, and bedforms have been created, modified, or completely destroyed and then reworked.
The Gran Desierto sand sheets and dunes are located atop deltaic deposits of the Pleistocene Colorado River. The lower Colorado River was captured by the Gulf of California 1.2 million years before present. This event places an upper bound on the age of the Gran Desierto with the Colorado's major
clastic sediment
Clastic rocks are composed of fragments, or clasts, of pre-existing minerals and rock. A clast is a fragment of geological detritus,Essentials of Geology, 3rd Ed, Stephen Marshak, p. G-3 chunks, and smaller grains of rock broken off other rocks ...
sources.
Conglomeritic sands and silts beneath the Mesa Arenosa were examined by Colletta and Ortlieb and dated at between 700,000 and 120,000 years before present.
[Colleta, B. and Ortlieb, L., Deformations of middle and late Pleistocene deltaic deposits at the mouth of the Rio Colorado, northwestern Gulf of California, in Malpica-Cruz, V. et al.(eds.), Neotectonics and sea level variations in the Gulf of California area: A symposium, University Nacional Auton Mexico, Institute Geolocia, 31-53, 1984.]
Vertebrate
Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () (chordates with backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, with c ...
fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
s found by Merriam within the deltaic deposits include ''
Equus'', ''
Gomphotherium
''Gomphotherium'' (; "welded beast") is an extinct genus of proboscids from the Neogene and early Pleistocene of Eurasia, Africa, North America and Asia. As of 2021, two species, ''G. annectens'' and possibly ''G. subtapiroideum'', are also k ...
'', and ''
Bison'' and were assigned to
Irvingtonian age (0.5 to 1.8 million years before present), dates consistent with the aforementioned capture of the lower Colorado River. Evidence of a
giant anteater
The giant anteater (''Myrmecophaga tridactyla'') is an insectivorous mammal native to Central and South America. It is one of four living species of anteaters, of which it is the largest member. The only extant member of the genus ''Myrmecophag ...
, ''
Myrmecophaga tridactyla
The giant anteater (''Myrmecophaga tridactyla'') is an insectivorous mammal native to Central and South America. It is one of four living species of anteaters, of which it is the largest member. The only extant member of the genus ''Myrmecoph ...
'', was found in the deltaic deposits in the southern Gran Desierto. Van Devender notes that the specimen was found in association with fossils of
mammoth
A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks an ...
s,
sloth
Sloths are a group of Neotropical xenarthran mammals constituting the suborder Folivora, including the extant arboreal tree sloths and extinct terrestrial ground sloths. Noted for their slowness of movement, tree sloths spend most of their l ...
s, and
boa constrictor
The boa constrictor (scientific name also ''Boa constrictor''), also called the red-tailed boa, is a species of large, non-venomous, heavy-bodied snake that is frequently kept and bred in captivity. The boa constrictor is a member of the family B ...
s, a tropical
faunal assemblage which supports a contention that the Colorado River delta of a previous
interglacial period
An interglacial period (or alternatively interglacial, interglaciation) is a geological interval of warmer global average temperature lasting thousands of years that separates consecutive glacial periods within an ice age. The current Holocene in ...
(>120,000 years ago) was much warmer and wetter than in the present interglacial.
Paleo-deltaic deposits near
Salina Grande correlate with a ubiquitous indurated shell deposit dated by Io/U
radiometric methods at 146,000 +13,000/-11,000 years of age.
Slate (1985) obtained
K-Ar ages for
basalt
Basalt (; ) is an aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the surface of a rocky planet or moon. More than 90 ...
flows in the western Pinacates; based on this work, some aeolian activity may have been present as early as 700,000 years ago, as evidenced by the dated accretionary mantles on basalt flows of the Pinacate volcanic field.
Blount and Lancaster proposed that by late Pleistocene time, the Colorado River was a highly competent stream flowing through the area which is occupied today by the massive western star dune zone. The seashore at this time was at least south of its present-day location. Primary bed loads of poorly sorted gravel were deposited from present-day Yuma, Arizona to an area south of the present-day Sierra del Rosario mountains. As rifting of the Gulf of California progressed to the northwest, and uplift along the coast began, the river channel shifted westward, leaving primary bedload deposits in the former channel and floodplain. Deltaic sediments beneath the Gran Desierto may be as much as deep.
Annual sediment loads prior to the damming of the Colorado River were prodigious. A single flood event deposited an estimated of coarse to medium sand as a sheet deposit on the modern delta just south of the international boundary. Events like this, even if rare, could fill up the Gran Desierto in only a few millennia.
Tectonics
The Gran Desierto is located adjacent to a rapidly subsiding
tectonic basin, the
Salton Trough
The Salton Trough is an active tectonic pull-apart basin, or graben. It lies within the Imperial, Riverside, and San Diego counties of southeastern California, United States and extends south of the Mexico–United States border into the stat ...
, which is a northern extension of the Gulf of California, itself an embayment created by rifting initiated during the
Pliocene
The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58[East Pacific Rise
The East Pacific Rise is a mid-ocean rise (termed an oceanic rise and not a mid-ocean ridge due to its higher rate of spreading that results in less elevation increase and more regular terrain), a divergent tectonic plate boundary located alon ...](_blank)
and the
San Andreas fault
The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly through California. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is right-lateral strike-slip (horizonta ...
system.
[Larson, R.L., Menard, H.W. and Smith, S., Gulf of California: A result of ocean floor spreading and transform faulting, Science, 161, 881-884, 1968.] Regional subsidence has propagated to the northwest as rifting and strike-slip faulting continues into the present day. The central portion of the nearby Salton Trough is more than below
sea level
Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardise ...
; it is protected from marine embayment only by the natural dike of the
Colorado River Delta
The Colorado River Delta is the region where the Colorado River flows into the Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez) in eastern Mexicali Municipality in the north of the state of Baja California in northwesternmost Mexico. The ...
.
Ongoing tectonic activity modifies the Gran Desierto today. The southernmost extension of the San Andreas fault system, the
Cerro Prieto Fault
The Cerro Prieto Fault is a transform fault located in far northern Baja California. It runs between the Cerro Prieto spreading center located southwest of Mexicali, and the Wagner Basin, another spreading center which lies under the Gulf of Cal ...
, passes directly through the area before continuing offshore into the Gulf of California. Strike-slip movement in the area is as high as 60 mm/year.
Since 1900, one magnitude 6.3 and two magnitude 7.1
earthquake
An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, fr ...
s have originated within the erg. Most seismicity within the Gran Desierto originates at depths of , corresponding to the transition between
deltaic deposits and
basement crystalline rock
A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituents (such as atoms, molecules, or ions) are arranged in a highly ordered microscopic structure, forming a crystal lattice that extends in all directions. In addition, macros ...
s. Local
uplift
Uplift may refer to: Science
* Geologic uplift, a geological process
** Tectonic uplift, a geological process
* Stellar uplift, the theoretical prospect of moving a stellar mass
* Uplift mountains
* Llano Uplift
* Nemaha Uplift
Business
* Uplif ...
is still occurring along the
Mesa Arenosa, a drag folded
fault block forming the coastal boundary.
Offshore features
The synchronous development of the
Colorado River Delta
The Colorado River Delta is the region where the Colorado River flows into the Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez) in eastern Mexicali Municipality in the north of the state of Baja California in northwesternmost Mexico. The ...
and the associated Gran Desierto sand sink continues offshore into the Gulf of California. Reports on the submarine
topography
Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps.
Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sc ...
of the Gulf of California by van Andel describe three former
river channels on the
seafloor
The seabed (also known as the seafloor, sea floor, ocean floor, and ocean bottom) is the bottom of the ocean
The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth an ...
: one originating at the present-day Colorado delta, another from the area of the paleo-delta between El Golfo and Salina Grande, and a third to the area of present-day
Puerto Peñasco
Puerto Peñasco ( ood, Geʼe Ṣuidagĭ) is a small city located in Puerto Peñasco Municipality in the northwest of the Mexican state of Sonora, from the border with the U.S. state of Arizona. According to the 2020 census, it has a population ...
. Rusnak reported on sonar soundings which discovered the valleys and also describe two elongate depressions, each about in length, into which the valley networks terminate at a depth of approximately below sea level. Those incised valley systems were also interpreted as
fluvial in origin.
[Ruznak, G.A. and Fisher, R.L., Structural history and evolution of the Gulf of California, in Marine Geology of the Gulf of California, van Andel, T.H. and Shor, G.G., eds., A.A.P .G., Memoir 3, 144-156, 1964.]
See also
*
El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve
**
Pinacate Peaks
*
Sonoran Desert
The Sonoran Desert ( es, Desierto de Sonora) is a desert in North America and ecoregion that covers the northwestern Mexican states of Sonora, Baja California, and Baja California Sur, as well as part of the southwestern United States (in Ariz ...
**
Colorado Desert
**
Lechuguilla Desert
**
Tule Desert
**
Yuma Desert
The Yuma Desert is a lower-elevation section of the Sonoran Desert in the southwestern United States and the northwest of Mexico. It lies in the Salton basin. The desert contains areas of sparse vegetation and has notable areas of sand dunes. With ...
*
Chihuahuan Desert
The Chihuahuan Desert ( es, Desierto de Chihuahua, ) is a desert ecoregion designation covering parts of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. It occupies much of far West Texas, the middle to lower Rio Grande Valley and the lo ...
References
*Biehler, S., Kovach, R.L. and Allen, C.R., Geophysical framework of the northern end of the Gulf of California structural province, in Marine Geology of the Gulf of California, van Andel, T .H. and Shor, G.G., eds., A.A.P.G., Memoir 3, 126–143, 1964.
*Guzman, A.E., Petroleum possibilities in Altar Desert, Sonora, Mexico, abs., A.A.P .G., 64, 716, 1980.
*MacDougal, D.T., Across Papagueria, Bull. American Geographical Soc., 40, 705–725, 1908.
External links
World Heritage Centre: Official UNESCO El Pinacate and Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve websiteUNESCO: Photo gallery of ReserveElPinacate.gob.mx: Reserva de la Biosfera El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de AltarElPinacate.gob.mx: "Historia" (la ocupación humana)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gran Desierto De Altar
Sonoran Desert
Deserts of Mexico
Deserts and xeric shrublands
Dunes of Mexico
Ergs
Geography of Sonora
Gulf of California
Natural history of Sonora
Landforms of Sonora