Riverside Fire

2020138,087 acresOregon

The Riverside Fire burned 138,087 acres, about 216 square miles, across Clackamas County. It began on September 8, 2020.

Watch how it happened

Riverside Fire · 2020

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

Detections5,879satellite 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 (5,065 VIIRS and 814 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 Riverside Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	37%	51,098
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	20%	27,090
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	30%	41,249
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	13%	17,364
Increased greennessvegetation greener after the fire than before	0.4%	557
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	0.5%	729

37% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 51,098 acres; 57% 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

Clackamas County	OR	138,181

Other large fires in Oregon in 2020

Lionshead Fire197,622 acres
Beachie Creek Fire194,483 acres
Holiday Farm Fire174,243 acres
Slater Fire157,657 acres
Archie Creek Fire131,781 acres
Brattain Fire51,484 acres
Indian Creek Fire46,237 acres
S Obenchain Fire32,853 acres

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