Sand Creek Fire

200349,760 acresAlaska

The Sand Creek Fire burned 49,760 acres, about 78 square miles, across Southeast Fairbanks Census Area. It began on June 14, 2003.

Watch how it happened

Sand Creek Fire · 2003

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

Detections215satellite 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 (215 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 Sand Creek Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	7.8%	3,878
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	34%	16,807
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	26%	13,166
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	15%	7,505
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.2%	118
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	17%	8,286

8% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 3,878 acres; 42% 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

Southeast Fairbanks Census Area	AK	49,787

Other large fires in Alaska in 2003

Hadweenzic Fire177,820 acres
Erickson Creek Fire119,594 acres
Cornucopia Creek Fire52,428 acres
Black Hill Fire41,893 acres
Kerulu Creek Fire40,990 acres
Big Mud Fire40,397 acres

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