Little Melozitna River Fire

201827,930 acresAlaska

The Little Melozitna River Fire burned 27,930 acres, about 44 square miles, across Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area. It began on June 6, 2018.

Watch how it happened

Little Melozitna River Fire · 2018

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

Detections616satellite 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 (465 VIIRS and 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 Little Melozitna River Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	12%	3,293
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	31%	8,782
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	43%	12,102
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	13%	3,576
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.4%	124
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	0.2%	52

12% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 3,293 acres; 43% 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	27,949

Other large fires in Alaska in 2018

Zitziana River Fire70,320 acres
Mooseheart Fire54,661 acres
Dulby Hot Springs Fire43,491 acres
White Mountain Creek Fire29,981 acres
Kevinjik Fire28,768 acres
Taixtsalda Hill Fire28,040 acres

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