Owens River Fire (2016): mapping the 5,443-acre footprint

The archived outline of the Owens River Fire spans about 7.9 km from west to east and 5.9 km from south to north. CAL FIRE places the incident at Clark Canyon, north of Mammoth Lakes, east of Hwy 395. The mapped boundary provides a second way to locate the event: it shows the extent around that reference location.

Start listed by CAL FIRE17 September 2016
County listingInyo
Reported area in hectares2,203 ha (converted from acres)
Extent of the mapped outline7.9 × 5.9 km (west–east × south–north)
Containment entry in the archive18 September 2016
Owens River Fire historical perimeter; north up. Approximate spans 7.9 by 5.9 kilometres.
Generalized historical perimeter. Source: NIFC interagency fire perimeter history.

What the perimeter shows

The two spans differ by only 1.9 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 5,443 acres; the interagency feature stores 5,458.0 GIS acres. The mapped value is 15.0 acres above the reported value (0.28%). This compares two published measurements, not two observation times. The difference cannot be read as fire growth.

A similar-sized fire for comparison

The Little Deer Fire of 2014 is the closest match by reported acreage in this 100-case collection (5,503 acres). Its mapped spans are 7.3 by 6.3 km, west–east then south–north, versus 7.9 by 5.9 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.