Irish Spring Fire

200747,814 acresOregon

The Irish Spring Fire burned 47,814 acres, about 75 square miles, across Malheur County. It began on August 17, 2007.

Watch how it happened

Irish Spring Fire · 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

Detections70satellite 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 (70 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 Irish Spring Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	27%	12,910
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	36%	17,120
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	18%	8,576
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	19%	9,193

27% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 12,910 acres; 63% 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

Malheur County	OR	47,844

Other large fires in Oregon in 2007

Egley Complex (Egley)139,679 acres
Battle Creek Complex (Battle Creek)79,057 acres
Poe Cabin Fire59,657 acres
Monument Complex (Red Hill Fire)54,576 acres
Bartlett Mountain Fire31,827 acres
Clark Butte Fire31,307 acres
Juniper Reservoir Fire28,437 acres

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