Southwest Wildfire Season Overview

Annual summary of the Southwest’s top 10 wildfires.

2022 SW Wildfire Season Overview

This report is the tenth in a series of annual Southwest wildfire season overviews available from the Southwest Fire Science Consortium and the Ecological Restoration Institute. The goal of this overview is to provide a concise summary of the fire season and to facilitate comparisons with past fires and fire seasons. It follows the format of past years’…

2021 SW Wildfire Season Overview

By: Michael Lynch, Lara Wood Miller, and Alexander Evans Wildfire is part of the landscape in the Southwest. It can be a threat to lives and property, but it is also crucial to maintaining healthy ecosystems. Plant communities in the Southwest are adapted to fire. For example, ponderosa pine forests need regular, low-severity fires to remain healthy. Over…

2020 SW Wildfire Season Overview

by M. Lynch and A. Evans. In 2020, wildfire burned 1,068,373 acres in the Southwest (Arizona and New Mexico), which is greater than the average number of acres burned annually in these two states over the previous ten-year period.” Arizona had significantly more wildfire (929,522 acres) than its ten-year average (305,623 acres), while New Mexico had fewer acres…