Library Patchly Gold
Library Patchly Gold

Fire activity · Queensland

Queensland Burnt Ground

Where Queensland has burnt in the last three years.

What it shows

Burnt ground across Queensland, mapped by the Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation from every Sentinel-2 satellite pass over the state and published one year at a time. It covers the last three years, and each scar is shaded by the year it burnt, newest in a hot orange through to the oldest in a pale ash, and each year can be shown or hidden on its own. Fresh ground is the reason to look: a recent burn strips the grass and thins the scrub, so old workings, benches and creek terraces show up from the air and the ground is open enough to swing a coil over. Older fire is left out because the country grows back: past about three years a scar has closed in and no longer marks ground worth walking. Patches under 10 hectares are left out too, since at 10 metre resolution the mapping picks up single burnt paddock corners that carry no useful signal. Small unburnt gaps inside a scar are filled in for the same reason: below about four satellite pixels they are ground the mapping could not resolve rather than ground you could stand in.

Before you rely on it

Scars are detected automatically from satellite imagery and checked by hand, so small or lightly burnt patches can be missed and edges are approximate. Ground that burnt in the last couple of months may not be mapped yet, and nothing older than 2024 is included.

Putting this on your map

Taking a layer from the Library onto a stack, and tuning how it draws, is a short guided tour on your own map.

How do I add map layers to Patchly?

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