Dixie and Caldor Wildfires Locator Maps - 2021
- Visualizations by:
- Michala Garrison
- View full credits
The Dixie wildfire, the northern most of the two, was the largest fire in California history with a total area (1,505 sq. miles) just above the size of U.S. state Rhode Island (1,214 sq. miles). In total, the Dixie fire burned for more than 100 days and this map displays the total extent between July 14 and October 22, 2021. The Caldor wildfire, east of Sacramento, is the second fire in California history to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In total, the Caldor fire burned for more than 80 days through the El Dorado National Forest, threatening the communities of Meyers and South Lake Tahoe.
For more details, see the paper here.
Perimeters of Dixie and Caldor wildfires located in California with the state of Rhode Island for size comparison. The extent of the Dixie wildfire is as of October 22, 2021, while the extent of the Caldor wildfire is as of October 6, 2021. The dropdown menu offers multiple resolutions for a 32:27 aspect ratio.
Perimeters of Dixie and Caldor wildfires located in California with the state of Rhode Island for size comparison. The extent of the Dixie wildfire is as of October 22, 2021, while the extent of the Caldor wildfire is as of October 6, 2021. The dropdown menu offers multiple resolutions for a 16:9 aspect ratio.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Visualizers
- Michala Garrison (SSAI) [Lead]
- Cindy Starr (GST)
Scientist
- Doug C. Morton (NASA/GSFC)
Technical support
- Ian Jones (ADNET)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET)
Papers
This visualization is based on the following papers:- Chen, Y., Hantson, S., Andela, N. et al. California wildfire spread derived using VIIRS satellite observations and an object-based tracking system. Sci Data 9, 249 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01343-0
Datasets used in this visualization
SRTM DEM (Collected with the SIR-C sensor)
Suomi-NPP Fire Events Data Suite (FEDS) GeoPackage (A.K.A. Fire Events Data Suite (FEDS) GeoPackage) (Collected with the VIIRS sensor)
The authors used the Suomi-NPP VIIRS I-band fire location data product (VNP14IMGML, Collection 1 Version 4), the U.S. National Land Cover Database (NLCD 2016) and gridMET product27 dead fuel moisture to develop an automatic system to dynamically track the growth of all fire events at a regional scale.
Credit: Yang Chen, Stijn Hantson, Niels Andela, Shane R. Coffield, Casey A. Graff, Douglas C. Morton, Lesley E. Ott, Efi Foufoula-Georgiou, Padhraic Smyth,
Dataset can be found at: https://figshare.com/s/0a68d4f2fbf5dc82930e
See more visualizations using this data setMRLC NLCD (A.K.A. Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) consortium National Land Cover Database (NLCD))
The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) provides nationwide data on land cover and land cover change at a 30m resolution with a 16-class legend based on a modified Anderson Level II classification system.
Dataset can be found at: https://www.mrlc.gov/
See more visualizations using this data setNatural Earth (A.K.A. Natural Earth)
Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software.
Dataset can be found at: https://www.naturalearthdata.com/
See more visualizations using this data setNatural Earth: 1:10m Cultural Vectors - Populated Places
North America Roads (A.K.A. Natural Earth: North America Roads)
The 1:1,000,000 scale roads database for North America from Natural Earth: http://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/10m-cultural-vectors/roads/. This data is in the public domain. Terms of use: http://www.naturalearthdata.com/about/terms-of-use/.
See more visualizations using this data setNote: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.
Related pages
Spread of the Caldor Fire - 2021
June 1, 2022, 5 a.m.
Read moreThis visualization shows the spread of the Caldor fire between August 15 and October 6, 2021, updated every 12 hours based on new satellite active fire detections. The yellow outlines track the position of the active fire lines for the last 60 hours, with the latest location of the fire front in the brightest shade of yellow. The red points show the location of active fire detections, while the grey region shows the estimated total area burned. The graph shows the cumulative burned area in square kilometers.Coming soon to our YouTube channel. This visualization highlights data from a new fire detection and tracking approach (Chen et al., 2022) based on near-real time active fire detections from the VIIRS sensor on the Suomi-NPP satellite. Every 12 hours, the fire tracking algorithm uses new active fire detections to update the total fire perimeter and estimate the position of active fire lines where the fire may continue to spread. Yellow lines indicate the new fire fronts from active fire data (red points) every 12 hours. This approach provides a detailed perspective on the behavior of the Caldor fire, just the second fire in California history to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The fire tracking data identify periods of rapid fire expansion and active fire detections within the perimeter from continued flaming and smoldering behind the active fire fronts. In total, the Caldor fire burned for more than 80 days through the El Dorado National Forest, threatening the communities of Meyers and South Lake Tahoe. The fire continued to burn for more than a month after the perimeter was contained in mid-September.For more details, see the paper here. This movie is identical to the above movie except that it is played twice the speed. Coming soon to our YouTube channel. This image shows the extent of the Caldor fire on August 21, 2021. The yellow outlines track the position of the active fire lines for the last 60 hours, with the latest location of the fire front in the brightest shade of yellow. The red points show the location of active fire detections, while the grey region shows the estimated total area burned. The graph shows the cumulative burned area in square kilometers. This image shows the extent of the Caldor fire on August 28, 2021. The yellow outlines track the position of the active fire lines for the last 60 hours, with the latest location of the fire front in the brightest shade of yellow. The red points show the location of active fire detections, while the grey region shows the estimated total area burned. The graph shows the cumulative burned area in square kilometers. This image shows the spread of the Caldor fire between August 15 and October 6, 2021, with the fire line for each 12-hour time step shown in a different color. Perimeter of the Caldor wildfire as of October 6, 2021. The dropdown menu offers multiple resolutions for a 16:9 aspect ratio.
Spread of the Dixie Fire - 2021
June 1, 2022, 5 a.m.
Read moreThis visualization shows the spread of the Dixie fire between July 14 and October 22, 2021, updated every 12 hours based on new satellite active fire detections. The yellow outlines track the position of the active fire lines for the last 60 hours, with the latest location of the fire front in the brightest shade of yellow. The red points show the location of active fire detections, while the grey region shows the estimated total area burned. The graph shows the cumulative burned area in square kilometers.Coming soon to our YouTube channel. This visualization highlights data from a new fire detection and tracking approach (Chen et al., 2022) based on near-real time active fire detections from the VIIRS sensor on the Suomi-NPP satellite. Every 12 hours, the fire tracking algorithm uses new active fire detections to update the total fire perimeter and estimate the position of active fire lines where the fire may continue to spread. Yellow lines indicate the new fire fronts from active fire data (red points) every 12 hours. This approach provides a detailed perspective on the behavior of the Dixie fire, the largest fire in California history. The fire tracking data identify periods of rapid fire expansion, spot fires from blowing embers outside of the large fire perimeter, and active fire detections within the perimeter from continued flaming and smoldering behind the active fire fronts. In total, the Dixie fire burned for more than 100 days, including more than a month of fire activity after the perimeter was contained in mid-September.For more details, see the paper here. This movie is identical to the above movie except that it is played twice the speed.Coming soon to our YouTube channel. This image shows the extent of the Dixie fire on July 21, 2021. The yellow outlines track the position of the active fire lines for the last 60 hours, with the latest location of the fire front in the brightest shade of yellow. The red points show the location of active fire detections, while the grey region shows the estimated total area burned. The graph shows the cumulative burned area in square kilometers. This image shows the extent of the Dixie fire on July 31, 2021. The yellow outlines track the position of the active fire lines for the last 60 hours, with the latest location of the fire front in the brightest shade of yellow. The red points show the location of active fire detections, while the grey region shows the estimated total area burned. The graph shows the cumulative burned area in square kilometers. This image shows the extent of the Dixie fire on August 31, 2021. The yellow outlines track the position of the active fire lines for the last 60 hours, with the latest location of the fire front in the brightest shade of yellow. The red points show the location of active fire detections, while the grey region shows the estimated total area burned. The graph shows the cumulative burned area in square kilometers. This image shows the spread of the Dixie fire between July 14 and October 22, 2021, with the fire line for each 12-hour step in time shown in a different color. Perimeter of the Dixie wildfire as of October 22, 2021. The dropdown menu offers multiple resolutions for a 16:9 aspect ratio.
NASA’s New Scientific Breakdown of Dramatic Caldor and Dixie Fires
May 30, 2022, 7:30 a.m.
Read moreComplete transcript available. This visualization shows the spread of the Caldor fire between August 15 and October 6, 2021, and the Dixie fire between July 14 and October 22, 2021, updated every 12 hours from a new fire detection and tracking approach based on near-real time active fire detections from the VIIRS sensor on the Suomi-NPP satellite. The yellow outlines track the position of the active fire lines for the last 60 hours, with the latest location of the fire front in the brightest shade of yellow. The red points show the location of active fire detections, while the grey region shows the estimated total area burned. The graph shows the cumulative burned area in square kilometers.