The Sonoran Desert, one of the world's largest, is situated in which country?
Sonoran Desert Refuge. The Sonoran Desert is home to the cultures of over seventeen contemporary Native American tribes, with settlements at and , as well as populations in Mexico. The largest city in the Sonoran Desert is Phoenix, Arizona, with a 2013 metropolitan population of about 4.3 million. Located on the Salt River in central Arizona, it is one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States. In 2007 in the Phoenix area, desert was losing ground to urban sprawl at a rate of approximately per hour. The next largest cities are Tucson, in southern Arizona, with a metro area population
Spanish missions in the Sonoran Desert Spanish missions in the Sonoran Desert The Spanish missions in the Sonoran Desert are a series of Jesuit Catholic religious outposts established by the Spanish Catholic Jesuits and other orders for religious conversions of the Pima and Tohono O'odham indigenous peoples residing in the Sonoran Desert. An added goal was giving Spain a colonial presence in their frontier territory of the Sonora y Sinaloa Province in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and relocating by Indian Reductions ("Reducciones de Indios") settlements and encomiendas for agricultural, ranching, and mining labor. The missions are in an area of the Sonoran Desert, then called