Each year, an area larger than England burns in Brazil; 20% of country’s territory affected in 30 years

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Each year, an area larger than England burns in Brazil. Over the last 36 years, an average of 150,900 km² were consumed by fire.

Considering the area burned since 1985, the cumulative total during the period reaches practically a fifth of national territory. There were 1,672,142 km² of vegetation burnt, equivalent to 19.6% of Brazil.

The unprecedented data is part of a study by Mapbiomas, an integrated project of universities, environmental organizations and technology companies. Using artificial intelligence resources, detailed images of fires in all types of land use and cover were superimposed.

In all, 108 terabytes of images were processed, showing the areas, years and months of highest and lowest fire incidence. The result now allows the burnt area to be identified for each month, throughout the assessed period, in addition to the type of land use and cover burnt.

The study found that almost two-thirds (65%) of fires occurred in native vegetation areas, with the Cerrado (savannah) and Amazon biomes accounting for 85% of all the area burned at least once in Brazil.

In the case of the Cerrado, the area burned per year since 1985 is equivalent to 45 times the size of the municipality of São Paulo. Another worrying statistic points out that some 61% of the areas affected by fire between 1985 and 2020 have been burned twice or more, i.e., these are not isolated events.

In the case of the Amazon, 69% of the biome burned more than once in the period, and 48% over three times.

Pantanal

The study shows that the Pantanal was the biome that burned the most in the past 36 years: 57% of its territory burned at least once, an area of 86,403 km². In the Cerrado, the affected area reached 36% (733,851 km²), while in the Amazon fire was identified in 16.4% (690,028 km²).

“The information that 20% of Brazil’s area has already been burned is no small matter. The Amazon, for example, which represents half of the country, theoretically should not burn. It is a humid forest, fire is not part of its natural regime, but we have seen this, driven by factors such as the advance of pasture areas,” says Mapbiomas Fogo’s coordinator Ane Alencar.

“This scenario shows that fire must be addressed with taking actions such as public policies. It is a very worrisome scenario, which has worsened in recent years.”

Vera Arruda, a researcher from the MapBiomas Fogo team in charge of mapping the Cerrado, says that the region is home to native vegetation in which fire is part of its regime, but not to the extent that has been occurring.

“The extent and frequency of the area burned in the Cerrado in the last almost 4 decades indicates that something is wrong with the fire regime in the biome,” she says.

The states with the highest occurrence of fires in the analyzed period were Mato Grosso, Pará and Tocantins. Although the large peaks of burned area in Brazil occurred mainly in years affected by extreme drought events (1987, 1988, 1993, 1998, 1999, 2007, 2010, and 2017), high rates of deforestation – especially in the Amazon after 2019 – had a high impact on the increase in burned area.

The dry season, between July and October, accounts for 83% of the occurrence of patch burns and forest fires.