1.
Socorro County, New Mexico
–
Socorro County is a county in the U. S. state of New Mexico. As of the 2010 census, the population was 17,866, the county was formed in 1852 as one of the original nine counties of New Mexico Territory. Socorro was originally the name given to a Native American village by Don Juan de Oñate in 1598, having received vitally needed food and assistance from the native population, Oñate named the pueblo Socorro. Socorro Countys history is linked with the rich history of the surrounding area. Bands of Apache effectively controlled the Magdalena-Datil region from the century until they were defeated in the Apache Wars in the late nineteenth century. Outlaw renegades Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch and notorious Apaches like Cochise, vicks Peak was named after Victorio, “a Mimbreño Apache leader whose territory included much of the south and southwest New Mexico. Perhaps most famous outlaw was the Apache Kid whose supposed grave lies within the Apache Kid Wilderness, stories of depredations by the Apache Kid, and of his demise, became so common and dramatic that in southwestern folklore they may be exceeded only by tales of lost Spanish gold. Native Americans lingered in the San Mateos well into the 1900s and we know this by an essay written by Aldo Leopold in 1919 where he documents stumbling upon the remains of a recently abandoned Indian hunting camp. A mining rush followed the Apache wars – gold, silver and it wasn’t until this time that extensive use of the area by non-Native Americans occurred. In fact, the last regularly used cattle trail in the United States stretched 125 miles westward from Magdalena, the route was formally known as the Magdalena Livestock Driveway, but more popularly known to cowboys and cattlemen as the Beefsteak Trail. The trail began use in 1865 and its peak was in 1919, the trail was used continually until trailing gave way to trucking and the trail official closed in 1971. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has an area of 6,649 square miles. It is the second-largest county in New Mexico by area, after Catron County, Socorro County ranges in elevation from approximately 4,528 ft on the banks of the Rio Grande to 10,784 ft at the top of South Baldy peak in the Magdalena Mountains. The southern portion of the Rocky Mountains extend into New Mexico, there are several mountain ranges that spread throughout the county. The Forest Service manages portions of four ranges, the Bear, Datil, Magdalena. Most of the land that comprises these mountains are within the Cibola National Forest and these ranges, as well as Ladron Peak located in Socorro County, are classified as sky islands. The population density was 3 people per square mile, there were 7,808 housing units at an average density of 1 per square mile. 48. 73% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race,26. 80% of all households were made up of individuals and 8. 20% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older
2.
New Mexico
–
New Mexico is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States of America. It was admitted to the Union as the 47th state on January 6,1912 and it is usually considered one of the Mountain States. New Mexico is fifth by area, the 36th-most populous, inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years before European exploration, New Mexico was colonized by the Spanish in 1598 Imperial Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain. Later, it was part of independent Mexico before becoming a U. S. territory and eventually a U. S. state as a result of the Mexican–American War. Among U. S. states, New Mexico has the highest percentage of Hispanics, the major Native American nations in the state are Navajo, Pueblo, and Apache peoples. The demography and culture of the state are shaped by these strong Hispanic and Native American influences and its scarlet and gold colors are taken from the royal standards of Spain, along with the ancient sun symbol of the Zia, a Pueblo-related tribe. New Mexico, or Nuevo México in Spanish, is incorrectly believed to have taken its name from the nation of Mexico. The name simply stuck, even though the area had no connection to Mexico or the Mexica Indian tribes, Mexico, formerly a part of New Spain, adopted its name centuries later in 1821, after winning independence from Spanish rule. New Mexico was a part of the independent Mexican Empire and Federal Republic of Mexico for 27 years,1821 through 1848, New Mexico and Mexico developed as neighboring Spanish-speaking communities under Spanish rule, with relatively independent histories. The states total area is 121,412 square miles, the eastern border of New Mexico lies along 103° W longitude with the state of Oklahoma, and 2.2 miles west of 103° W longitude with Texas. On the southern border, Texas makes up the eastern two-thirds, while the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora make up the western third, the western border with Arizona runs along the 109°03 W longitude. The southwestern corner of the state is known as the Bootheel, the 37° N latitude parallel forms the northern boundary with Colorado. The states New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Utah come together at the Four Corners in the corner of New Mexico. New Mexico, although a state, has very little water. Its surface water area is about 250 square miles, the New Mexican landscape ranges from wide, rose-colored deserts to broken mesas to high, snow-capped peaks. Despite New Mexicos arid image, heavily forested mountain wildernesses cover a significant portion of the state, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the southernmost part of the Rocky Mountains, run roughly north-south along the east side of the Rio Grande in the rugged, pastoral north. The most important of New Mexicos rivers are the Rio Grande, Pecos, Canadian, San Juan, the Rio Grande is tied for the fourth-longest river in the United States. Tourists visiting these sites bring significant money to the state, other areas of geographical and scenic interest include Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument and the Gila Wilderness in the southwest of the state
3.
United States
–
Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
4.
Cibola County, New Mexico
–
Cibola County is a county in the U. S. state of New Mexico. As of the 2010 census, the population was 27,213 and it is New Mexicos youngest county, created on June 19,1981, from the westernmost four-fifths of the formerly much larger Valencia County. Cibola County comprises the Grants, NM Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is part of the Albuquerque-Santa Fe-Las Vegas. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has an area of 4,542 square miles, the population density was 6 people per square mile. There were 10,328 housing units at a density of 2 per square mile. 33. 42% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race,21. 10% of all households were made up of individuals and 7. 30% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.95 and the family size was 3.41. In the county, the population was out with 30. 70% under the age of 18,9. 60% from 18 to 24,27. 50% from 25 to 44,21. 50% from 45 to 64. The median age was 33 years, for every 100 females there were 95.50 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.20 males, the median income for a household in the county was $27,774, and the median income for a family was $30,714. Males had an income of $27,652 versus $20,078 for females. The per capita income for the county was $11,731, about 21. 50% of families and 24. 80% of the population were below the poverty line, including 32. 00% of those under age 18 and 17. 70% of those age 65 or over. As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 27,213 people,8,860 households, the population density was 6.0 inhabitants per square mile. There were 11,101 housing units at a density of 2.4 per square mile. The racial makeup of the county was 41. 8% white,41. 0% American Indian,1. 0% black or African American,0. 5% Asian,0. 1% Pacific islander,12. 4% from other races, and 3. 1% from two or more races. Those of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 36. 5% of the population, in terms of ancestry,5. 4% were Irish, and 1. 5% were American. The average household size was 2.79 and the family size was 3.30. The median age was 36.6 years, the median income for a household in the county was $37,361 and the median income for a family was $41,187
5.
Cibola National Forest
–
The Cibola National Forest is a 1,633,783 acre United States National Forest in New Mexico, USA. The name Cibola is thought to be the original Zuni Indian name for their pueblos or tribal lands, the name was later interpreted by the Spanish to mean, buffalo. The forest is disjointed with lands spread across central and northern New Mexico, west Texas, the Cibola National Forest is divided into four Ranger Districts, the Sandia, Mountainair, Mt. Taylor, and Magdalena. The Forest includes the San Mateo, Magdalena, Datil, Bear, Gallina, Manzano, Sandia, Mt. Taylor, the Forest also manages four National Grasslands that stretch from northeastern New Mexico eastward into the Texas Panhandle and western Oklahoma. The Cibola National Forest and Grassland is administered by Region 3 of the United States Forest Service from offices in Albuquerque, elevation ranges from 5,000 ft to 11,301 ft. The Cibola National Forest currently has 137,701 acres designated as Wilderness, in addition to these acres, it has 246,000 acres classified as Inventoried Roadless Areas pursuant to the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. The Cibola National Forest is organized into several divisions over three states, the combined Cibola National Grasslands are 262,141 acres in size. New Mexico is home to much of the Forest, including the Kiowa National Grassland 136,417 acres in Harding, Union, Mora, and Colfax counties, New Mexico. The Cibola National Forests Sandia Ranger District is just east of Albuquerque in Central New Mexico, the Sandia District includes national forest land in eastern Bernalillo and southeastern Sandoval counties, and includes the Sandia Peak Tram and the Sandia Crest National Scenic Byway. The Sandia Mountains lie in the portion of the District. It is here where Congress designated the Sandia Mountain Wilderness in 1978, the Cibolas Sandia Ranger District also includes the Manzanita Mountains, which stretch south, between the Sandia and the Manzano Mountains. The Manzano Mountains are managed by the Cibola National Forests Mountainair Ranger District, the Mountainair Ranger District manages national forestland in Torrance, northwestern Lincoln, and eastern Valencia counties, which are in central New Mexico. Within the Mountainair District are the Gallinas Mountains and the Manzano Mountains, Congress designated the Manzano Wilderness in 1978. The Mount Taylor Ranger District manages land in northern Cibola, southern McKinley, Mount Taylor and Zuni Mountains are within the Mount Taylor District. Overseeing approximately 800,000 acres, the Magdalena Ranger District is the largest of the Cibola National Forests four mountain districts, the Cibola’s Magdalena District manages land in south central New Mexico in western Socorro, northeastern Catron, and northern Sierra counties. The Bear Mountains, Datil Mountains, Magdalena Mountains and San Mateo Mountains are all within the Magdalena District, there are two Wilderness areas in this District - the Apache Kid and the Withington Wilderness areas, both of which are in the San Mateo Mountains. In addition to the designated Wilderness, the Magdalena Ranger District has 205,972 acres of Inventoried Roadless Areas, the Magdalena Ranger Districts officers are stationed in the Village of Magdalena. The District has roots in the Gila Forest Reserve, created by President William McKinley in 1899, making the U. S. Forest Service the “oldest continuous business in Magdalena. ”Cibola biomes range from Chihuahuan desert to short grass prairie to piñon-juniper to sub-alpine spruce and fir
6.
Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array
–
The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array is a radio astronomy observatory located on the Plains of San Agustin, between the towns of Magdalena and Datil, some 50 miles west of Socorro, New Mexico. It comprises 27 25-meter radio telescopes in a Y-shaped array and all the equipment, instrumentation, the VLA stands at an elevation of 6970 ft above sea level. It is a component of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the radio telescope comprises 27 independent antennae, each of which has a dish diameter of 25 meters and weighs 209 metric tons. The antennae are distributed along the three arms of a track, shaped in a wye -configuration, using the rail tracks that follow each of these arms—and that, at one point, intersect with U. S. The angular resolution that can be reached is between 0.2 and 0.004 arcseconds, there are four commonly used configurations, designated A through D. The observatory normally cycles through all the possible configurations every 16 months. Moves to smaller configurations are done in two stages, first shortening the east and west arms and later shortening the north arm and this allows for a short period of improved imaging of extremely northerly or southerly sources. The frequency coverage is 74 MHz to 50 GHz, the Array Operations Center for the VLA is located on the campus of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, New Mexico. In 2011, a long upgrade project had resulted in the VLA expanding its technical capacities by factors of as much as 8,000. The 1970s era electronics were replaced with state-of-the-art equipment, on March 31,2012, the VLA was officially renamed in a ceremony inside the Antenna Assembly Building. In 1989 the VLA was used to receive communications from the Voyager 2 spacecraft as it flew by Neptune. It is not, despite depictions in culture such as the movie Contact. It has been used to carry out several surveys of radio sources, including the NRAO VLA Sky Survey. The driving force for the development of the VLA was David S. Heeschen and he is noted as having sustained and guided the development of the best radio astronomy observatory in the world for sixteen years. Congressional approval for the VLA project was given in August 1972, the first antenna was put into place in September 1975 and the complex was formally inaugurated in 1980, after a total investment of USD $78.5 million. It was the largest configuration of radio telescopes in the world, with a view to upgrading the venerable 1970s technology with which the VLA was built, the VLA has evolved into the Expanded Very Large Array. The upgrade has enhanced the sensitivity, frequency range. A second phase of this upgrade may add up to eight additional dishes in other parts of the state of New Mexico, up to 300 km away, in 1995 and 1996, the VLA was used for following up the Wow. signal from the SETI project
7.
Megafauna
–
In terrestrial zoology, megafauna are large or giant animals. The most common thresholds used are weight over 40 kilograms, over 44 kilograms and this includes many species not popularly thought of as overly large, such as white-tailed deer, red kangaroo, and humans. In practice, the most common encountered in academic and popular writing describes land mammals roughly larger than a human that are not domesticated. It is also used for the largest extant wild land animals, especially elephants, giraffes, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses. Megafauna may be subcategorized by their position into megaherbivores, megacarnivores. The term is sometimes applied to animals of great size relative to a more common or surviving type of the animal. These characteristics, although not exclusive to such megafauna, make them vulnerable to human overexploitation, in part because of their slow population recovery rates. In an examination of body mass changes over time, the maximum increase possible in a given time interval was found to scale with the interval length raised to the 0.25 power. A strikingly faster rate of change was found for large decreases in body mass, when normalized to generation length, the maximum rate of body mass decrease was found to be over 30 times greater than the maximum rate of body mass increase for a ten-fold change. Starting from just a few kg before the event, maximum size had reached ~50 kg a few years later. However, when considered from the standpoint of rate of size increase per generation, megaherbivores eventually attained a body mass of over 10000 kg. A similar trend emerges when rates of increase of body mass per generation for different mammalian clades are compared. Among terrestrial mammals, the fastest rates of increase of body mass0.259 vs. time occurred in perissodactyls, followed by rodents and proboscids, the rate of increase for artiodactyls was about a third that of perissodactyls. The rate for carnivorans was slightly lower yet, while primates, terrestrial mammalian carnivores from several eutherian groups all reached a maximum size of about 1000 kg. The largest known metatherian carnivore, Proborhyaena gigantea, apparently reached 600 kg and it has also been suggested that maximum size for mammalian carnivores is constrained by the stress the humerus can withstand at top running speed. Analysis of the variation of body size over the last 40 Ma suggests that decreasing temperature. However, the two parameters are interrelated, making the driver of the trends in maximum size more difficult to identify. Since tetrapods returned to the sea in the Late Permian, they have dominated the top end of the body size range
8.
Geronimo
–
Geronimo was a prominent leader and medicine man from the Bedonkohe band of the Chiricahua Apache tribe. While well known, Geronimo was not a chief among the Chiricahua or the Bedonkohe band, at any one time, about 30 to 50 Apaches would be following him. However, since he was a leader in raiding and warfare he frequently led large numbers of men and women beyond his own following. During Geronimos final period of conflict from 1876 to 1886 he surrendered three times and accepted life on the Apache reservations in Arizona, reservation life was confining to the free-moving Apache people, and they resented restrictions on their customary way of life. Geronimo was later transferred to General Nelson Miles at Skeleton Canyon, in his old age, Geronimo became a celebrity. He appeared at fairs, including the 1904 Worlds Fair in St. Louis, however, he was not allowed to return to the land of his birth. He died at the Fort Sill hospital in 1909 and he was still a prisoner of war. He is buried at the Fort Sill Indian Agency Cemetery surrounded by the graves of relatives, Apache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans originally from the Southwest United States. The current division of Apachean groups includes the Western Apache, Chiricahua, Mescalero, Jicarilla, Lipan, raids ranged from stealing livestock and other plunder, to the capture and/or killing of victims, sometimes by torture. Mexicans and Americans responded with attacks against the Apache which were no less violent. The raiding and retaliation fed the fires of a virulent revenge warfare that reverberated back and his fighting ability extending over 30 years forms a major characteristic of his persona. Among Geronimos own Chiricahua tribe many had mixed feelings about him, while respected as a skilled and effective leader of raids or warfare, he emerges as not very likable, and he was not widely popular among the other Apache. Nevertheless, Apache people stood in awe of Geronimos powers which he demonstrated to them on a series of occasions and these powers indicated to other Apaches that Geronimo had super-natural gifts that he could use for good or ill. In eye-witness accounts by other Apaches, Geronimo was able to become aware of distant events as they happened and he also demonstrated powers to heal other Apaches. His grandfather, Mahko, had been chief of the Bedonkohe Apache and he had three brothers and four sisters. His parents raised him according to Apache traditions, after the death of his father, his mother took him to live with the Chihenne, Geronimo married a woman named Alope, from the Nedni-Chiricahua band of Apache when he was 17, they had three children. She was the first of nine wives, on March 5,1851, a company of 400 Mexican soldiers from Sonora led by Colonel José María Carrasco attacked Geronimos camp outside Janos while the men were in town trading. Among those killed were his wife, children and mother, the loss of his family led Geronimo to hate all Mexicans for the rest of his life, he and his followers would frequently attack and kill any group of Mexicans that they encountered
9.
Aldo Leopold
–
Aldo Leopold was an American author, philosopher, scientist, ecologist, forester, conservationist, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is best known for his book A Sand County Almanac, Leopold was influential in the development of modern environmental ethics and in the movement for wilderness conservation. His ethics of nature and wildlife preservation had a impact on the environmental movement. He emphasized biodiversity and ecology and was a founder of the science of wildlife management, Rand Aldo Leopold was born in Burlington, Iowa, on January 11,1887. His father, Carl Leopold, was a businessman who made walnut desks, charles Starker, father of Clara and uncle of Carl, was a German immigrant, educated in engineering and architecture. Rand Aldo was named two of Carls business partners—C. W. Rand and Aldo Sommers—although the Rand was eventually dropped, the Leopold family included younger siblings Mary Luize, Carl Starker, and Frederic. Leopolds first language was German, although he mastered English at an early age, Aldo Leopolds early life was highlighted by the outdoors. Carl would take his children on excursions into the woods and taught his oldest son woodcraft, Aldo showed an aptitude for observation, spending hours counting and cataloging birds near his home. Mary would later say of her brother, He was very much an outdoorsman. He was always out climbing around the bluffs, or going down to the river and he attended Prospect Hill Elementary, where he ranked at the top of his class, and then, the overcrowded Burlington High School. Every August, the family vacationed in Michigan at the forested Les Cheneaux Islands in Lake Huron, which the children took to exploring. In 1900, Gifford Pinchot, who oversaw the newly implemented Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture, hearing of this development, the teenage Leopold decided on forestry as a vocation. His parents agreed to let him attend The Lawrenceville School, a college in New Jersey in order to improve his chances of admission to Yale. The Burlington High School principal wrote in a letter to the headmaster at Lawrenceville that Leopold was as earnest a boy as we have in school. He arrived at his new school in January 1904, shortly before he turned seventeen and he was considered an attentive student, although he was again drawn to the outdoors. Lawrenceville was suitably rural, and Leopold spent much time mapping the area, Leopold studied at the Lawrenceville School for a year, during which time he was accepted to Yale University. Because the Yale School of Forestry granted only graduate degrees, he first enrolled in Sheffield Scientific Schools preparatory forestry courses for his undergraduate studies, in 1909, Leopold was assigned to the Forest Services District 3 in the Arizona and New Mexico territories
