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’ overviews and describes the impacts of ten wildfires, each over 10,000 acres, in Arizona and New Mexico in 2022. It is worth noting the overwhelming social and ecological dimension of one fire, the Hermits Peak Calf Canyon (HPCC) Fire. The causes and impacts of this fire are covered in more detail in other reports and publications, as noted in the HPCC section below. As in previous overviews, this report covers the time period each fire burned, fire management costs, vegetation types, previous burn footprints, and, where available, burn severity. The conclusion section summarizes these same measures for the large wildfires in the region. These fire season overview reports serve as the only continual resource to Southwest wildfire information and provide a unique opportunity to compare fires and fire seasons year to year.
Fires covered in the 2022 Overview: Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon; Cooks Peak; Tunnel Fire; Cerro Pelado Fire; Mitchell Fire; Bear Trap Fire; San Rafael Fire; Black Fire; Contreras Fire; and Pipeline Fire.
