This 2023 report is the eleventh 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 nine wildfires, each over 10,000 acres, in Arizona and New Mexico in 2023. As in previous overviews, this report covers when each fire burned, fire management costs, vegetation types, previous wildfires in the area, and burn severity, where available. The conclusion section summarizes these same characteristics for the large wildfires in the region and discusses how tires burned in proximity to human communities. Fire season overview reports provide a unique opportunity to compare fires and fire seasons, which highlight trends and changes as managers and communities adapt to climate change.
Fires covered in the Overview: Pass Fire, Wilbur Fire, Ridge Fire, Beehive Fire, Pilot Fire, Divide Fire, Prior Fire, Pasture Fire, Still Fire
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