Aspen Fire (2013): mapping the 22,992-acre footprint

The archived outline of the Aspen Fire spans about 13.4 km from west to east and 16.4 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at Seven miles north of Big Creek. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.

Start listed by CAL FIRE22 July 2013
County listingFresno
Reported area in hectares9,305 ha (converted from acres)
Extent of the mapped outline13.4 × 16.4 km (west–east × south–north)
Containment entry in the archive24 September 2013
Aspen Fire historical perimeter; north up. Approximate spans 13.4 by 16.4 kilometres.
Generalized historical perimeter. Source: NIFC interagency fire perimeter history.

What the perimeter shows

The two spans differ by only 3.1 km. That does not make this a circular burn: the dimensions measure the outermost coordinates, leaving indentations and gaps invisible. Use the polygon itself, rather than its enclosing rectangle, to check whether a location intersects the footprint.

Two estimates of area

The incident report gives 22,992 acres; the interagency feature stores 22,937.5 GIS acres. The mapped value is 54.5 acres below the reported value (0.24%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.

A similar-sized fire for comparison

The Holy Fire of 2018 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (23,136 acres). Its mapped spans are 14.9 by 11.5 km, west–east then south–north, versus 13.4 by 16.4 km here. The longer axes run in different directions. Matching on acreage would miss that contrast.

Sources and map method

Spans use the geographic extremes of a generalized boundary, converted to kilometres at its middle latitude. They are approximate map dimensions, not distances travelled by flames. The GIS acreage is the source attribute, not an area recalculated from the simplified outline.