News Release
USFS/DOI Map
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Contact: Grand Canyon Office of Communications
Interagency Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) teams from the Department of the Interior (DOI) and US Forest Service recently completed field data evaluations to produce the Soil Burn Severity (SBS) map for the Dragon Bravo Fire. This map field-verifies the accuracy of burn severity categories (unburned/very low, low, moderate, and high) from satellite images and helps estimate post-fire risks, such as erosion, sediment washing into streams, increased stream flows, and the chances of debris flows.
The SBS map estimates approximately 9,851 acres (7%) of the fire is unburned/very low, approximately 97,724 acres (65%) have low soil burn severity, approximately 38,354 acres (26%) sustained a moderate severity, and approximately 3,470 acres (2%) sustained a high SBS. The SBS map product is an estimate of fire effects to soils, not fire effects to vegetation. SBS characterizes fire effects to the soil surface and below ground. Fire effects to vegetation would include an estimate of vegetation mortality and does not always correlate with degree of soil burn severity.
Moderate and high soil burn severity can alter or damage physical, chemical, and biological soil properties resulting in increased runoff, erosion, and negative effects to soil productivity. These soil properties include, but are not limited to, soil cover (effective litter), soil organic matter content, hydrophobicity (water repellency), soil pore space, and soil structure (degree of aggregation). Changes to these soil properties determine the degree of soil burn severity. Loss of effective ground cover, especially on steep slopes, greatly increases probability of soil erosion and increased runoff.
The Dragon Bravo BAER teams used remote sensing imagery with field-validated soils data to produce the final SBS map, which serves as an analysis tool to estimate post-fire erosion with subsequent sediment delivery, stream flows and debris flow probabilities. The SBS map and more information on the DOI BAER Team efforts at Grand Canyon National Park and on BLM Arizona Strip Field Office lands are available on DOI BAER DOI BAER InciWeb. Additionally, updates regarding the USFS BAER Team efforts on the Kaibab National Forest are available on a separate USFS BAER InciWeb page.
PDF file of Soil Burn Severity map.
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Last updated: August 24, 2025