Fires consumed 487,000 hectares of the Brazilian Amazon in January and February, warns report

According to a report released yesterday, the Brazilian Amazon rainforest recorded fires that affected 487,000 hectares in the first two months of the year, which warns that fires destroyed 536,000 hectares throughout Brazil during the first t year.

The Monitor do Fogo presented the data on Monday, an initiative of the Annual Mapping Project of Land Use and Land Cover in Brazil (MapBiomas), in partnership with the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM).

The Amazon region accounted for 90 percent of the fires in the country’s six biomes (Amazon, Caatinga, Cerrado, Atlantic Forest, Pampa, and Pantanal).

The number of fires in January and February was 28 percent lower than in the same period in 2022, thanks to more rainfall.

“Still, many hectares are burned in a period of more rain,” said Ipam researcher Vera Arruda.

Another peculiarity of the season is the high rate of occurrences in the state of Roraima, in the northern region of the country and bordering Venezuela and Guyana. The survey shows that fires in the state consumed 259,000 hectares, or 48 percent of the total identified.

“There is a type of vegetation that is more like the Cerrado. It’s not just forested, as in most of the Amazon,” Arruda explained.

In the states of Mato Grosso and Pará, the fire reached 90,000 and 70,000 hectares, respectively.

If added to Roraima, they represent 79 percent of the fire detected in the report.

The Cerrado ranks second on the list, with 24,000 hectares affected by fires.

Asked what the team considers a margin of fire tolerance, as far as the biome is concerned, Arruda commented that the vegetation has adapted to fire.

However, the researcher pointed out that “the fire that occurs today, in recent years, is no longer the fire that occurred naturally in the vegetation because it occurred more due to the presence of lightning.”

“Today’s fire in vegetation is of anthropic, human origin, not of natural origin,” she warned.