Amazon Fires in 2024: a point off the curve?

11 de November de 2024

Nov 11, 2024

Ane Alencar, Vera Arruda, Felipe Martenexen, Newton Monteiro, Wallace Silva

In 2024, the Amazon faces one of the most severe droughts ever recorded, exacerbating an already alarming environmental crisis in the region. The combination of extremely low rainfall levels, elevated temperatures, and uncontrolled use of fire linked to agricultural activities is creating ideal conditions for the occurrence of wildfires, which are spreading rapidly and uncontrollably.

In this technical note, we present a detailed analysis of data from the Fire Monitor, an initiative by the MapBiomas network coordinated by IPAM, covering the period from January to August 2024, with a special
focus on the month of August, which stood out as one of the most critical in terms of fire incidence. Our goal is to identify and compare the affected areas concerning previous years, with an emphasis on land use and land cover types, as well as the most impacted land tenure categories.

Click here to read the technical note in English.

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This project is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Find out more at un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals.

Veja também

See also

Fire, fragmentation, and windstorms: A recipe for tropical forest degradation

Fire, fragmentation, and windstorms: A recipe for tropical forest degradation

Widespread degradation of tropical forests is caused by a variety of disturbances that interact in ways that are not well understood. To explore potential synergies between edge effects, fire and windstorm damage as causes of Amazonian forest degradation, we quantified vegetation responses to a 30‐min, high‐intensity windstorm that in 2012, swept through a large‐scale fire experiment that borders an agricultural field. Our pre‐ and postwindstorm measurements include tree mortality rates and modes of death, above‐ground biomass, and airborne LiDAR‐based estimates of tree heights and canopy disturbance (i.e., number and size of gaps). The experimental area in the southeastern Amazonia includes three 50‐ha plots established in 2004 that were unburned (Control), burned annually (B1yr), or burned at 3‐year intervals (B3yr).