Kavaklıdere fire, August 2021 Menteşe, Kavaklıdere, Yatağan
The fire started on 2 August 2021 in Kavaklıdere, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 15,322 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.
It is the 2th largest in Muğla since 2016 (of 43 with a page). Number 4 in Türkiye in 2021, of 138.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 15,322ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 7days
- 2 Aug 2021 – 8 Aug 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 4
- districts
- Started on
- 2 Aug
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 977
- in a single hotspot: 1,197 MW
- Danger at start
- 77
- Very extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.4GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Menteşe 112,447 inhabitants · 4.9 km from the centre10,007 ha reached on 4 Aug6.1 %
-
4,690 ha reached on 2 Aug14 %
-
Yatağan 44,940 inhabitants · 16.5 km from the centre632 ha reached on 4 Aug0.8 %
-
Bozdoğan 33,843 inhabitants · 19.5 km from the centre25 ha0.0 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
What burned
- Coniferous forest59 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland29 %
- Other natural land4.8 %
- Agricultural areas4.2 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub2.5 %
- Mixed forest0.8 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
Checked against the press
Checked on 29 September 2026We checked this page against 3 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- Kavaklıdere ve Menteşe'deki orman yangını · Kavaklıdere, Muğla, Yatağan ve Yılanlı yangınları · Bozdoğan (Aydın) Başalan yangını
- Official area reported: 15,238 ha (the satellite measured 15,322 ha)
Sources
- Muğla'da büyük yangınların ikinci yılında yanan alanlar tekrar yeşeriyor — Anadolu Ajansı, 29 July 2023 · official source
- Kavaklıdere ve Menteşe'deki orman yangını 8 gündür devam ediyor — Halk TV, 9 August 2021
- Yangınlarda kaç hektarlık alan yandı? — Yeni Şafak, 4 August 2021
Official figures are measured differently from satellite ones and sometimes cover only part of the fire.
The weather day by day
ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 Aug | 32.0 °C | 11 % | 72 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 77 |
| 3 Aug | 34.1 °C | 9 % | 69 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 83 |
| 4 Aug | 33.4 °C | 13 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 5 Aug | 33.3 °C | 14 % | 44 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 6 Aug | 34.0 °C | 10 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 7 Aug | 26.9 °C | 23 % | 60 km/h | 0.6 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 8 Aug | 28.0 °C | 25 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 9 Aug after | 29.1 °C | 11 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 10 Aug after | 28.9 °C | 15 % | 63 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 11 Aug after | 28.2 °C | 22 % | 72 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 12 Aug after | 27.0 °C | 18 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 13 Aug after | 27.7 °C | 22 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 14 Aug after | 28.4 °C | 19 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 15 Aug after | 29.0 °C | 11 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 16 Aug after | 30.2 °C | 12 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 17 Aug after | 30.8 °C | 15 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 18 Aug after | 30.9 °C | 18 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 4 August 2021 the air beside the fire reached 96 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 53: 3.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 977Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kavaklıdere fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 2 August 2021 and 8 August 2021: 7 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 15,322 hectares (153.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 4 municipalities: Menteşe (10,007 ha, 6.1 %); Kavaklıdere (4,690 ha, 14 %); Yatağan (632 ha, 0.8 %); Bozdoğan (25 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Kavaklıdere and came within 3.5 km of its centre. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 72 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 83, class Very extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Türkiye (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
Where to verify it
A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.
Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
Does something look wrong on this page?
This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 977 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Checked against news and agencies: 3 confirmed sources.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.