Charleston Fire

2006153,976 acresNevada

The Charleston Fire burned 153,976 acres, about 241 square miles, across Elko County. It began on August 15, 2006.

Watch how it happened

Charleston Fire · 2006

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

Detections586satellite 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 (586 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 Charleston Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	1.9%	2,854
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	33%	50,578
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	50%	76,816
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	15%	23,721

2% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 2,854 acres; 35% 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

Elko County	NV	154,036

Other large fires in Nevada in 2006

Winters Fire242,689 acres
Sheep Fire152,997 acres
Amazon Fire105,232 acres
Suzie Fire81,707 acres
Basco Fire47,628 acres
Marble Fire39,352 acres
Sage Fire28,086 acres

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