SPACEPHOTOS

Little Colorado River Basin, Arizona, USA Winter-Spring 1997 The lighter colored terrain, with numerous intermittent tributaries feeding into a central stream channel (foreground), is the Little Colorado River Basin. While most of the basin lies in Arizona, some of the tributaries originate in west central New Mexico (center of the image). The darker features that are scattered throughout the picture are mountains and plateaus. The Zuni Mountains can be identified along the northwest side of the basin and a sizable lava valley (dark, uniform area) is even visible southeast of the Zuni Mountains. A number of mountain ranges, including partially snow-capped Baldy Peak (11,403 feet—3476 meters) that is located within the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in east-central Arizona, can also be observed along the southern edge of the picture. Although a highway is not discernible on this small-scale image, Interstate Highway 40 skirts along the northern edge of the image. The north-south trending Rio Grande Valley (thin, darker, linear feature) is discernible along the entire top (east side) of the picture. Albuquerque (barely discernible) lies between the Rio Grande and the Sandia Mountains (partly under clouds, top right corner)