Pinacate National Park and Biosphere Reserve is a 2,000-square-kilometer volcanic field in the Sonora province of Mexico, near the Arizona border. Surrounded by the Sonora Desert, this field contains more than 300 volcanic vents and cinder cones, including at least 10 maar craters.
Maar eruptions are a rare form of volcano that erupts violently when rising magma meets underground water, producing a pocket of highly pressurized steam that blows a nearly circular hole in the crust above.
The largest crater in the Pinacate field is Cerro Elegante, a maar crater about a kilometer in diameter.

Image taken December 5, 2002, by Landsat 7.

Credit: NASA/GSFC/USGS EROS Data Center

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