Chihuahuan Desert

The Chihuahuan Desert is located in the border region of the United States and Mexico. It is the largest of all North American deserts with an area of ​​approximately 453,000 km ². It is situated mainly in the area of the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Coahuila. However, their foothills extend into some U.S. states: It takes southeastern parts of Arizona, southern New Mexico and West Texas, a. To the south it extends to the Mexican states of Zacatecas and San Luis Potosi.

The Chihuahuan Desert can be categorized as a rain shadow desert. This is the case because it is shielded from the west and eastern Sierra Madre. These two mountain ranges hold a majority of the moisture coming from the Gulf of Mexico, the area of the desert away. This also represents the main reason for the emergence of the desert dar.

The desert is a desert basin, which is interrupted by several small mountain series such as the Sacramento Mountains, Guadalupe Mountains and the Davis Mountains. These mountain areas are much cooler and wetter than the desert and covered by coniferous forests.

Compared to the west adjacent Sonoran Desert, the height differences in the Chihuahua are significantly larger; they vary 600-1675 meters. This summer is usually milder than in Sonora. The average temperatures in June lie between 35 and 40 ° C, in winter it can get very cold at higher altitudes even. The rainfall in the Chihuahua is also slightly higher than in the other deserts of the region (next to the Sonora and the Mojave Desert and the Great Basin ), however, it is also here at well below 250 millimeters. The bulk of the precipitate is focused on a short " monsoon " phase in late summer. Snow falls only in the higher elevations.

The Chihuahuan Desert is characterized by typical desert vegetation consisting of Agave, Lechuguilla, Mesquite, Yucca, Sotol and various grasses. The Chihuahua is the Big Bend National Park.

White Sands

White Sands ( "White Sand" ) is the name of a gypsum desert in the Tularosa Basin in the south of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the most unusual part of Chihuahua. The area was declared in 1933 to the White Sands National Monument.

Actually, it is in the "white sand " to plaster. This plaster comes from the surrounding mountains by rainfall in the Lake Lucero, which is located in the southwestern corner of White Sands and has no outlet. In the summer months, sometimes with extreme heat, the lake dries out and there remain only the gypsum crystals back, which is raised by the southwest winds to form dunes, with about 700 square kilometers, the largest gypsum desert in the world.

In the area of ​​White Sands, the White Sands Missile Range is a rocket test site of the U.S. Army, on the 1945 took place the first atomic bomb explosion ( the Trinity test). Moreover, the base was once alternative landing site for the space shuttle, as happened in 1982 with the STS- 3 mission of Columbia. From the NASA of the alternate landing site therefore also White Sands Space Harbor ( WSSH ) is called.