© 2009 by the Association of Paciic Coast Geographers. All rights reserved.  Fire in the Desert: Initial Gullying Associated with the Cave Creek Complex Fire, Sonoran Desert, Arizona Casey D. Allen University of Colorado, Denver Jeremy D. Dorn and Ronald I. Dorn Arizona State University ABSTRACT he June 2005 Cave Creek Complex Fire is one of the largest historic wild- ires to afect Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. Post-ire gullying was measured using :900-scale aerial photographs. Detailed comparisons of pre-ire and post-ire imagery, selected using a stratiied randomly sampling ap- proach, reveal far more gullies formed in contact with dirt roads than adjacent wildlands, approximately four times more frequently. Post-ire gullies that did not form in contact with roads covered approximately 0.8 percent of the analyzed imagery ater the 2005 Arizona monsoon and approximately 0.24 percent ater the 2006 Arizona monsoon. Extrapolat- ing this percentage to the total area burned, we estimate gullying to have impacted 456 acres ater the 2005 Arizona monsoon and 592 acres ater the 2006 Arizona monsoon. A corresponding ield-based investigation reveals both deepening and widening of gullying over time. Introduction Wildfires dramatically increase soil erosion rates, increase gully formation, and alter the behavior of streams (Moody and Kinner 2006; Shakesby and Doerr 2006; Germanoski and Miller 995; Doerr et al. 2000; Blake et al. 2005). his is true even in arid regions (Germanoski and Miller 995; Shakesby and Doerr 2006). Despite a substantial history of over 200 wildire ires in central Arizona over the past half-century (Arrowsmith 2004), only a handful of studies have analyzed erosional impact of ires in the Sonoran Desert (Desilets et al. 2007; Pearthree 2004; O’Dea and Guertin 2003; Misner et al. 2002; Arrowsmith 2004). Understanding the erosional impact of ires will become increasingly important as populations continue to expand in the arid southwestern United States.