Legion Lake Fire
201754,850 acresSouth Dakota
The Legion Lake Fire burned 54,850 acres, about 86 square miles, across Custer County. It began on December 11, 2017.
Watch how it happenedLegion Lake Fire · 2017
How it happened
Watch it burn in the order satellites saw it, coloured by how severely each place burned.
How severely it burned
Burn severity inside the final perimeter, classified from Landsat images taken before and after the fire.
| Severity | Share | Acres |
|---|---|---|
| Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered | 11% | 5,978 |
| Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive | 13% | 6,993 |
| Lowsurface fire, most trees survive | 37% | 20,421 |
| Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change | 34% | 18,614 |
| Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before | 5.0% | 2,768 |
| Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images | 0.1% | 77 |
11% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 5,978 acres; 24% 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.
| Custer County | SD | 54,869 |
Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (USGS and U.S. Forest Service). Type recorded: Wildfire.