Zitziana River Fire

201870,320 acresAlaska

The Zitziana River Fire burned 70,320 acres, about 110 square miles, across Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area. It began on June 4, 2018.

Watch how it happened

Zitziana 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

Detections2,633satellite 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 (2,044 VIIRS and 589 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 Zitziana River Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	33%	23,546
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	34%	23,949
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	20%	14,165
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	9.9%	6,972
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.1%	39
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	2.3%	1,649

33% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 23,546 acres; 68% 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	70,350

Other large fires in Alaska in 2018

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