This the twelfth annual report in a series Southwest wildfire season overviews available from the Southwest Fire Science Consortium and the Ecological Restoration Institute. This overview provides a concise summary of the 2024 fire season and facilitates comparisons with past fires and fire seasons. It follows the format of past years’ overviews and describes the …
Wildland fire prevention is underfunded despite its proven value. This fact sheet covers best practices of prevention education, engineering, enforcement, and administration.
In a nutshell: Presenters from University of Arizona discuss how wildland fire managers use decision support tools and how those weather and climate tools can be revised or reinvented to better fit managers’ needs. Recorded on: Thursday, June 26, 2025 Description: Three short presentations about recent work from the University of Arizona on understanding how …
This guide was created as a resource for Arizona individuals and communities to help in the aftermath of a wildfire and post-fire flooding. Check out the fact sheet below for a quick reference guide. The full guide is below.
About the Summit Held in Prescott on October 28-30, 2025, the Arizona Wildland Urban Interface Summit is a statewide event for wildfire preparedness, planning, and postfire recovery. Participants will discuss emergent strategies for landscape-scale wildfire planning and implementation, access professional networking opportunities, and leave with a renewed confidence on how to collaboratively address and manage …
In a nutshell: Learn about commonalities and unique events within the 10 largest Southwestern fires of 2024 and hear a meteorologist explore the fire season outlook and expectations for fire weather behavior in 2025. Recorded on: Thursday, May 1, 2025 Description: Most frequent-fire forests throughout the Intermountain West have been degraded during the last 150 …
Read more “Fire in the Southwest: Fire season 2024 overview and 2025 outlook”
In a nutshell: Three webinars over three days explore conditions that contribute to wildfire ignitions, how preparation and response need to be tailored to fit the affected community, and how red flag warnings help reduce fire ignitions. Interdisciplinary understanding and prediction of wildfires Presenters: Mojtaba Sadegh, Boise State University; Karen Short, USDA Forest Service Understanding …
Read more “Human Causes and Human Consequences of Wildfires in the Western United States”
The expansion of the grass-fire cycle in the deserts of North America is driving ecosystem level transformation from patchy desert scrub to invasive grassland. A novel fire regime in the Sonoran Desert is forcing a new approach to land management. Unprecedented large-scale fires in recent years, especially in 2005 and 2020, have been driven by …
In February 2024, the Southwest Fire Science Consortium led a field trip in central Arizona to learn more about the dynamics between wildfire and invasive species in the Sonoran Desert. The field trip was focused on improving our collective understanding of how invasive grasses and forbs have altered the fire conditions in the Sonoran Desert …
In a nutshell: This presentation offers information on the history and basics and presenter experience with two cross-boundary agreement tools available to Federally Registered Native American Tribes, the Tribal Forest Protection Act and 638 Authority. This sets the stage for a workshop on the same topic at the October 2024 Arizona Tribal Fire and Climate …
Read more “A Primer on Tribal Forest Protection Act and 638 Authority”