El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve ( es, Reserva de la Biosfera El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar) is a

biosphere reserve A nature reserve (also known as a wildlife refuge, wildlife sanctuary, biosphere reserve or bioreserve, natural or nature preserve, or nature conservation area) is a protected area of importance for flora, fauna, or features of geological or ...

and

UNESCO 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 ...

managed by the

federal government of Mexico The Federal government of Mexico (alternately known as the Government of the Republic or ' or ') is the national government of the United Mexican States, the central government established by its constitution to share sovereignty over the republ ...

, specifically by

Secretariat of the Environment and Natural Resources The Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (in Spanish: ''Secretaría del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, SEMARNAT'') is Mexico's environment ministry. Its head, the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources, is a member ...

, in collaboration with the state governments of Sonora and the Tohono O'odham. It is in 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 ...

in northwest Mexico, east 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 ...

, in the eastern part of the

Gran Desierto de Altar The Gran Desierto de Altar is one of the major sub-ecoregions of the Sonoran Desert, located in the State of Sonora, in northwest Mexico. It includes the only active erg dune region in North America. The desert extends across much of the northern ...

, just south of the border with

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 ...

and north of the city of

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 ...

. It is one of the most significant visible landforms in North America seen from space. A volcanic system known as Santa Clara is the main part of the landscape, including three peaks: Pinacate, Carnegie and Medio. In the area there are over 540

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

plants Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclude ...

, 40 species of

mammals Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur o ...

, 200 of birds, 40 of reptiles, amphibians and freshwater

fishes Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...

. There are threatened

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found else ...

species as

Sonoran pronghorn The Sonoran pronghorn (''Antilocapra americana sonoriensis'') is an endangered subspecies of pronghorn that is endemic to the Sonoran Desert. Conservation Around 200 animals currently are believed to exist in Arizona in the United States, up fr ...

bighorn sheep The bighorn sheep (''Ovis canadensis'') is a species of sheep native to North America. It is named for its large horns. A pair of horns might weigh up to ; the sheep typically weigh up to . Recent genetic testing indicates three distinct subspec ...

gila monster The Gila monster (''Heloderma suspectum'', ) is a species of venomous lizard native to the Southwestern United States and the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora. It is a heavy, typically slow-moving reptile, up to long, and it is the only ve ...

and

desert tortoise The desert tortoise (''Gopherus agassizii''), is a species of tortoise in the Family (biology), family Testudinidae. The species is native to the Mojave Desert, Mojave and Sonoran Deserts of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexic ...

. The biosphere reserve covers an area of , making up about half of the World Heritage site. The extent of the World Heritage site is 7,146 km², greater than that of the states of Aguascalientes,

Colima Colima (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Colima ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Colima), is one of the 31 states that make up the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It shares its name with its capital and main city, Colima. Colima i ...

, Morelos and

Tlaxcala Tlaxcala (; , ; from nah, Tlaxcallān ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Tlaxcala ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Tlaxcala), is one of the 32 states which comprise the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 60 municipaliti ...

separated.

Formation

El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve is known for its unique physical and biological characteristics, by the presence of a volcanic shield, and by the extensive areas of active dunes that surround it, and the greatest concentration of Maar craters. The Pinacate Mountains range has

orogenic Orogeny is a mountain building process. An orogeny is an event that takes place at a convergent plate margin when plate motion compresses the margin. An ''orogenic belt'' or ''orogen'' develops as the compressed plate crumples and is uplifted t ...

features of high interest, products of volcanic eruptions that accumulated lava in compact rocks, sand and volcanic ashes that formed colors of special beauty, and craters such as El Elegante, Cerro Colorado, MacDougal, and Sykes. The Pinacate Peaks (''Picos del Pinacate''), a group of volcanic peaks and cinder cones, are located in the Reserve north of

. The highest peak is Cerro del Pinacate (Santa Clara volcano), with an elevation of . Pinacate comes from Náhuatl language word ''pinacatl'', for the Pinacate beetle, a stink beetle endemic to the Sonoran Desert. The Pinacate Peaks volcanoes have erupted sporadically for about 4 million years. The most recent activity was about 11 000 years ago.

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

sent astronauts to the Gran Desierto de Altar from 1965 to 1970, to train for walking on the moon, due to the similarities of the terrain to the

lunar surface The geology of the Moon (sometimes called selenology, although the latter term can refer more generally to " lunar science") is quite different from that of Earth. The Moon lacks a true atmosphere, which eliminates erosion due to weather. It does ...

History

Pre-Columbian era

The first inhabitants are known as ''San Dieguito people'', they were hunter-gatherer who lived off the land, moving from the mountains to the

looking for food. The early stages of occupation seem to have ended at the beginning of the

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 ...

about 20000 years ago, when

drought A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...

forced people to leave the

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have arise ...

. A second stage of occupation by ''San Dieguito people'' began in the late glacial period. This group returned to the mountains and lived as their

ancestors An ancestor, also known as a forefather, fore-elder or a forebear, is a parent or ( recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent and so forth). ''Ancestor'' is "any person from w ...

had. Tinajas must have been a reliable source of water during this time. The second stage of occupation ended with the arrival of an antipyretic period 9000 years ago, which again forced the people to leave the territory. The most recent indigenous inhabitants of the Pinacate and Gran Desierto de Altar are the Pinacateño band of the Hia C-ed O'odham. Like the prehistoric San Dieguito culture, the Pinacateños roamed the Pinacate all the way to the sea in search of food, concentrating their camps near the tinajas. During these voyages, they left signs of their presence; one example of this is the network of paths that go from tinaja to tinaja, as well as the stone tools and potsherds found near these water sources.

Explorations

There are few records of those who were the first explorers in this area. Possibly the first European to see the mountain now known as Sierra Pinacate was the explorer Melchior Díaz on 1540. Subsequently, in 1698 the priest

Eusebio Kino Eusebio Francisco Kino ( it, Eusebio Francesco Chini, es, Eusebio Francisco Kino; 10 August 1645 – 15 March 1711), often referred to as Father Kino, was a Tyrolean Jesuit, missionary, geographer, explorer, cartographer and astronomer bor ...

, founder of

Mission San Xavier del Bac Mission San Xavier del Bac ( es, La Misión de San Xavier del Bac) is a historic Spanish Catholic mission located about south of downtown Tucson, Arizona, on the Tohono O'odham Nation San Xavier Indian Reservation. The mission was founded in 16 ...

in southern

Tucson , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...

, Arizona, visited the site and returned on several occasions, he and his group climbed to the top of El Pinacate, which was then named Santa Clara Hill. Before 1956, few scientists and explorers had been in El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar, the most famous, the group MacDougal, Hornaday and Sykes who explored the western part of the mountain on 1907.

References

* ''Jack Ruby’s Kitchen Sink: Offbeat Travels through America’s Southwest'', by Tom Miller; ''pp. 10–26,''

External links

*
Volcano.si.edu: Global Volcanism Program—Pinacate

NASA: Satellite photo of Volcán Pinacate

{{DEFAULTSORT:El Pinacate Y Gran Desierto De Altar Biosphere Reserve *03 Biosphere reserves of Mexico Protected areas of the Sonoran Desert Protected areas of Sonora Natural history of Sonora Geography of Sonora Gulf of California

Ramsar sites in Mexico World Heritage Sites in Mexico Protected areas established in 1993 1993 establishments in Mexico Tohono O'odham