Moon Lake Fire

201327,815 acresAlaska

The Moon Lake Fire burned 27,815 acres, about 43 square miles, across Southeast Fairbanks Census Area. It began on June 25, 2013.

Watch how it happened

Moon Lake Fire · 2013

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

Detections1,764satellite 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 (1,461 VIIRS and 303 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 Moon Lake Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	14%	3,869
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	47%	13,200
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	25%	6,890
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	14%	3,778
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.2%	43
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	0.1%	35

14% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 3,869 acres; 61% 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

Southeast Fairbanks Census Area	AK	27,819

Other large fires in Alaska in 2013

Lime Hills Fire193,970 acres
Moore Creek Fire135,698 acres
Stuart Creek #2 Fire87,915 acres
Beaver Log Lakes Fire62,194 acres
Prospect Creek Fire61,812 acres
Mississippi Fire59,146 acres
Sandless Lake Fire56,921 acres
Sulatna River Fire44,396 acres

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