Las Conchas Fire

2011150,816 acresNew Mexico

The Las Conchas Fire burned 150,816 acres, about 236 square miles, across 3 counties. It began on June 26, 2011.

Watch how it happened

Las Conchas Fire · 2011

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

Detections1,380satellite 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 (1,380 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 Las Conchas Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	20%	30,856
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	17%	26,082
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	22%	33,336
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	6.3%	9,537
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.2%	331
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	34%	50,673

20% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 30,856 acres; 38% 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

Sandoval County	NM	116,489
Los Alamos County	NM	21,852
Rio Arriba County	NM	12,532

Other large fires in New Mexico in 2011

Wallow Fire563,564 acres
Frying Pan Ranch Fire106,264 acres
Donaldson Fire103,242 acres
Miller Fire84,897 acres
Enterprise Fire77,348 acres
Last Chance Fire53,445 acres
Tire Fire44,930 acres
Cloverdale2 Fire33,555 acres

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