Fish Creek Fire

200183,306 acresAlaska

The Fish Creek Fire burned 83,306 acres, about 130 square miles, across 2 counties. It began on June 20, 2001.

Watch how it happened

Fish Creek Fire · 2001

How it happened

Watch it burn in the order satellites saw it, coloured by how severely each place burned.

About this replay

Date (UTC)—Historical replay

Burned so far—acres

High severity—of the area so far

Detections3satellite fire pixels

Fire milestones

Burn severityHigh, Moderate, Low, Unburned to low, Increased greenness

Burning nowAreas reached in the last half day of satellite passes

Washington, D.C., to scale61 square miles of land, drawn at the fire’s scale

Timing: NASA FIRMS satellite fire detections (3 MODIS) inside the final perimeter; each place takes the time of its nearest detection, so the order is satellite-observed but interpolated between passes, roughly every 12 hours. Severity: Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (USGS, U.S. Forest Service), mapped from Landsat after the fire.

How severely it burned

Burn severity inside the final perimeter, classified from Landsat images taken before and after the fire.

Map of burn severity across the Fish Creek Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	29%	24,390
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	31%	26,202
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	19%	15,851
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	8.0%	6,631
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	12%	10,228

29% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 24,390 acres; 61% burned at moderate or high severity.

Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (U.S. Geological Survey and USDA Forest Service). Classes come from the change in a Landsat burn index (dNBR) between images before and after the fire; acres are each class’s share of the fire’s mapped area.

Where it burned

Acres inside each county, measured from the satellite-mapped perimeter.

Acres burned by county

Denali Borough	AK	57,975
Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area	AK	25,386

Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (USGS and U.S. Forest Service). Type recorded: Wildfire.