Big Turnaround Complex (Floyds Island Prairie)

2007215,291 acresGeorgia

The Big Turnaround Complex (Floyds Island Prairie) burned 215,291 acres, about 336 square miles, across 3 counties. It began on May 5, 2007.

Watch how it happened

Big Turnaround Complex (Floyds Island Prairie) · 2007

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

Detections775satellite fire pixels

Fire milestones

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

Burning nowAreas reached in the last half day of satellite passes

New York City, to scale301 square miles of land, drawn at the fire’s scale

Timing: NASA FIRMS satellite fire detections (775 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 Big Turnaround Complex (Floyds Island Prairie)

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	0.5%	1,111
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	11%	23,262
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	57%	123,238
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	19%	39,935
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	13%	27,745

1% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 1,111 acres; 11% 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

Charlton County	GA	134,064
Ware County	GA	70,544
Clinch County	GA	10,772

Other large fires in Georgia in 2007

Big Turnaround Complex328,707 acres
Sweat Farm Road Fire52,477 acres

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