Beaver Fire (2014): mapping the 32,496-acre footprint

The archived outline of the Beaver Fire spans about 20.2 km from west to east and 13.7 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at north of Highway 96, off of Beaver Creek Road. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.

Start listed by CAL FIRE30 July 2014
County listingSiskiyou
Reported area in hectares13,151 ha (converted from acres)
Extent of the mapped outline20.2 × 13.7 km (west–east × south–north)
Containment entry in the archive2 September 2014
Beaver Fire historical perimeter; north up. Approximate spans 20.2 by 13.7 kilometres.
Generalized historical perimeter. Source: NIFC interagency fire perimeter history.

What the perimeter shows

The two spans differ by only 6.5 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 32,496 acres; the interagency feature stores 32,493.4 GIS acres. The mapped value is 2.6 acres below the reported value (0.01%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.

A similar-sized fire for comparison

The Eiler Fire of 2014 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (32,416 acres). Its mapped spans are 12.8 by 22.7 km, west–east then south–north, versus 20.2 by 13.7 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.