Buck Fire (2017): mapping the 13,417-acre footprint

The archived outline of the Buck Fire spans about 9.6 km from west to east and 9.2 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at Black Rock Mountain, North Portion of Yolla BollyWilderness. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.

Start listed by CAL FIRE12 September 2017
County listingTrinity
Reported area in hectares5,430 ha (converted from acres)
Extent of the mapped outline9.6 × 9.2 km (west–east × south–north)
Containment entry in the archive9 January 2018
Buck Fire historical perimeter; north up. Approximate spans 9.6 by 9.2 kilometres.
Generalized historical perimeter. Source: NIFC interagency fire perimeter history.

What the perimeter shows

The two spans differ by only 0.4 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 13,417 acres; the interagency feature stores 13,357.3 GIS acres. The mapped value is 59.7 acres below the reported value (0.45%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.

A similar-sized fire for comparison

The Cranston Fire of 2018 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (13,139 acres). Its mapped spans are 12.1 by 10.2 km, west–east then south–north, versus 9.6 by 9.2 km here. The broad proportions are comparable. That does not establish that fuel, wind or suppression tactics were similar.

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.