El Pinacate and Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve () is a biosphere reserve and

UNESCO World Heritage Site World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an treaty, international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural ...

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 Mexico, United Mexican States, the central government established by its constitution to share sovereignty over the ...

, specifically by Secretariat of the Environment and Natural Resources, in collaboration with the state governments of

Sonora Sonora (), officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora (), is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the Administrative divisions of Mexico, Federal Entities of Mexico. The state is divided into Municipalities of Sonora, 72 ...

and the Tohono O'odham. It is in the Sonoran Desert in northwest Mexico, east of the Gulf of California, in the eastern part of the Gran Desierto de Altar, just south of the border with

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

and north of the city of Puerto Peñasco. It is one of the most significant visible landforms in

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seen from space. A volcanic system known as Santa Clara is the main part of the landscape, including three peaks: Pinacate, Carnegie and Medio. It is a sister park to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona. Its wildlife is threatened by the militarization of the Mexico–United States border and the construction of the Mexico–United States border wall. In the area there are over 540

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

plants Plants are the eukaryotes that form the kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria to produce sugars f ...

, 40 species of mammals, 200 of birds, 40 of reptiles,

amphibians Amphibians are ectothermic, anamniote, anamniotic, tetrapod, four-limbed vertebrate animals that constitute the class (biology), class Amphibia. In its broadest sense, it is a paraphyletic group encompassing all Tetrapod, tetrapods, but excl ...

and freshwater

fishes A fish (: fish or fishes) is an aquatic, anamniotic, gill-bearing vertebrate animal with swimming fins and a hard skull, but lacking limbs with digits. Fish can be grouped into the more basal jawless fish and the more common jawed ...

. There are threatened

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only 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 foun ...

species as Sonoran pronghorn, bighorn sheep, gila monster and desert tortoise. 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, Morelos and Tlaxcala 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

dune A dune is a landform composed of wind- or water-driven sand. It typically takes the form of a mound, ridge, or hill. An area with dunes is called a dune system or a dune complex. A large dune complex is called a dune field, while broad, flat ...

s that surround it, and the greatest concentration of Maar craters. The Pinacate Mountains range has orogenic 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 cone A cinder cone or scoria cone is a steep, volcanic cone, conical landform of loose pyroclastic rock, pyroclastic fragments, such as volcanic ash, clinkers, or scoria that has been built around a volcanic vent. The pyroclastic fragments are forme ...

s, are located in the Reserve north of Puerto Peñasco. 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 federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

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.

History

Pre-Columbian era

The first inhabitants are known as ''San Dieguito people'', they were

hunter-gatherer A hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living in a community, or according to an ancestrally derived Lifestyle, lifestyle, in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local naturally occurring sources, esp ...

who lived off the land, moving from the mountains to the Gulf of California 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 g ...

about 20000 years ago, when

drought A drought is a period of 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, ...

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 aris ...

. 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 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, Jesuits, SJ (, ; 10 August 1645 – 15 March 1711), often referred to as Father Kino, was an Italian Jesuit, missionary, geographer, explorer, cartographer, mathematician and astronomer born in the Prince-Bishopric of Tre ...

, founder of Mission San Xavier del Bac in southern

Tucson Tucson (; ; ) is a city in Pima County, Arizona, United States, and its county seat. It is the second-most populous city in Arizona, behind Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix, with a population of 542,630 in the 2020 United States census. The Tucson ...

, 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 in 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 Gran Desierto de Altar Ramsar sites in Mexico World Heritage Sites in Mexico Protected areas established in 1993 1993 establishments in Mexico Tohono O'odham