The Rock Horned Lizard (Camaleón de Piedra, in Spanish), Phrynosoma ditmarsi, is a poorly known Mexican endemic species with a distribution restricted to the state of Sonora. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has categorized this species as Data Deficient (Frost et al., 2007), but using the Environmental Vulnerability measure (EVS) Wilson et al. (2013) assessed this species with a score of 16, placing it in the middle portion of the high vulnerability…

RESUMEN

Vivimos en el Antropoceno. La superficie completa de la tierra ha sido impactada por la actividad humana y nuestro uso del suelo. En este con- texto, la mayoría de los pastizales en zonas áridas y semiáridas tienen procesos de degradación. Este trabajo describe los cambios provocados por la antropización del paisaje en pastizales del norte de México y Suroeste de Estados Unidos, y la forma como se comporta la hidrología de ellos ante diferentes intensidades de…

Boundary Surveys

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 at the end of the United States-Mexico War established the boundary between the two nations, and expanded the United States to the Pacific Ocean. In 1853, the Gadsen Purchase added the area along the modern Arizona-New Mexico-Sonora border to the United States. The expeditions to survey the border between 1848 and 1855 were the rst biological inventories of the borderlands. Many common Sky Islands plants were…

Mind boggling... no testing wells and now a bigger tailings pond

https://www.proceso.com.mx/583417/grupo-mexico-desoye-orden-de-la-scjn-sobre-presa-de-jales-en-sonora

BY MILTON MARTÍNEZ, MAY 9, 2019

TAHUICHOPA, Son. (apro) - The mining company Grupo México minimized the public consultation of residents of Bacanuchi, in the municipality of Arizpe, Sonora, to continue with the project of the new tailings dam that is already in operation.

Last September, the Supreme…

Sonora has a rich natural diversity, including reptiles and amphibians. Sonora’s location on the United States-Mexico border creates some unique conservation challenges for its wildlife. We compiled a list of the amphibian and reptile species currently known for Sonora, summarized the conservation status of these species, and compared our list of species with known species lists for adjacent states. The herpetofauna of Sonora comprises 200 species of amphibians and reptiles (38 amphibians…

Aim: To evaluate changes in breeding bird communities and assess implications for conservation.

Location: Madrean Sky Islands and northern Sierra Madre Occidental, Mexico. Methods: I compared observations from recent fieldwork (2009–2012) with an extensive historical data set (1887–1954) and used modelling and multivariate techniques to assess spatiotemporal changes in species occurrence, richness and assemblage composition, and associations with…

The flora of the lower Río Bavispe Valley from the Huásabas area south to the Río Áros at 430 to 1,510 m. elevations (1,410 to 4,954 ft.) was studied from 1995 to 2016. A total of 401 plant taxa in 74 families and 274 genera were recorded in the lower Río Bavispe Valley study area, including 24 non-native species (6.0%). The families with the most species were Asteraceae (50), Fabaceae (50), Poaceae (42), Euphorbiaceae (20), Malvaceae (19), Cactaceae (13), Solanaceae (15), and…

Mexico is recognized globally as a mega-diversity country. The state of Sonora has very diverse fauna, fora, and vegetation. The diversity of horned lizards in the genus Phrynosoma (Phrynosomatidae) in the state of Sonora is a reflection of the landscape and biotic diversity. In this paper, we summarize the distribution and ecology of eight species of Phrynosoma in Sonora.