Railbelt Complex (Minto Flats South)

2009523,418 acresAlaska

The Railbelt Complex (Minto Flats South) burned 523,418 acres, about 818 square miles, across 2 counties. It began on June 21, 2009.

Watch how it happened

Railbelt Complex (Minto Flats South) · 2009

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

Detections5,151satellite fire pixels

Fire milestones

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

Burning nowAreas reached in the last half day of satellite passes

Houston, to scale640 square miles of land, drawn at the fire’s scale

Timing: NASA FIRMS satellite fire detections (5,151 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 Railbelt Complex (Minto Flats South)

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	26%	138,678
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	31%	164,596
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	20%	107,097
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	20%	105,033
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.6%	2,931
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	1.0%	5,083

26% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 138,678 acres; 58% 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

Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area	AK	487,109
Denali Borough	AK	36,417

Other large fires in Alaska in 2009

Big Creek Fire174,888 acres
Tonclonukna Creek Fire158,922 acres
Titna River Fire157,330 acres
Nowitna Fire134,822 acres
Zitziana Fire120,312 acres
Wood River 1 Fire120,046 acres
Railbelt Complex (Rex Creek)87,805 acres
Stevens Creek 1 Fire81,227 acres

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