Soda Creek (Black Pulaski Complex) Fire

200633,777 acresMontana

The Soda Creek (Black Pulaski Complex) Fire burned 33,777 acres, about 53 square miles, across Petroleum County. It began on July 17, 2006.

Watch how it happened

Soda Creek (Black Pulaski Complex) 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

Detections131satellite fire pixels

Fire milestones

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

Burning nowAreas reached in the last half day of satellite passes

Boston, to scale48 square miles of land, drawn at the fire’s scale

Timing: NASA FIRMS satellite fire detections (131 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 Soda Creek (Black Pulaski Complex) Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	6.7%	2,271
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	41%	13,689
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	50%	16,907
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	2.7%	906

7% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 2,271 acres; 47% 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

Petroleum County	MT	33,766

Other large fires in Montana in 2006

Derby Fire200,876 acres
Pine Ridge Complex103,158 acres
Bundy Railroad Fire91,623 acres
Lost Creek (Black Pulaski Complex) Fire38,561 acres
Buffalo Creek Fire37,611 acres
Red Eagle Fire32,560 acres
Horton Fire25,091 acres

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