Southfork Complex (Cougar)

200627,914 acresIdaho

The Southfork Complex (Cougar) burned 27,914 acres, about 44 square miles, across Valley County. It began on August 7, 2006.

Watch how it happened

Southfork Complex (Cougar) · 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

Detections341satellite fire pixels

Fire milestones

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

Burning nowAreas reached in the last half day of satellite passes

Manhattan, to scale23 square miles of land, drawn at the fire’s scale

Timing: NASA FIRMS satellite fire detections (341 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 Southfork Complex (Cougar)

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	14%	3,966
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	21%	5,863
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	29%	8,185
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	32%	8,919
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.1%	21
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	3.4%	960

14% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 3,966 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

Valley County	ID	27,930

Other large fires in Idaho in 2006

Crystal Fire218,571 acres
Sailor Cap Fire62,679 acres
Foster Gulch Fire52,456 acres
Stone 2 Fire50,659 acres
Rattlesnake Complex48,305 acres
Middle Fork Complex33,857 acres
Red Mountain Fire33,388 acres
Heavens Gate Complex (Black Butte)30,690 acres

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