Whitefish Lake 1 Fire

201570,935 acresAlaska

The Whitefish Lake 1 Fire burned 70,935 acres, about 111 square miles, across Bethel Census Area. It began on June 1, 2015.

Watch how it happened

Whitefish Lake 1 Fire · 2015

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

Detections1,218satellite 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 (996 VIIRS and 222 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 Whitefish Lake 1 Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	8.6%	6,108
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	16%	11,335
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	37%	26,010
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	17%	12,196
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	5.3%	3,793
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	16%	11,493

9% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 6,108 acres; 25% 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

Bethel Census Area	AK	70,979

Other large fires in Alaska in 2015

Middle Yukon Fires407,220 acres
Tobatokh Fire220,037 acres
Isahultila Fire192,663 acres
Holtnakatna Fire180,199 acres
Tanana Area Fires176,773 acres
Rock Fire142,933 acres
Big Mud River 1 Fire140,914 acres
Munsatli 2 Fire124,572 acres

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