Brazil has 22.38 million hectares affected by fire over nine months
From January to September 2024, Brazil had 22.38 million hectares burned by the outbreaks of fire that spread throughout the country, MapBiomas reported Friday (Oct. 11). September alone saw 10.65 million hectares—nearly half of the entire area affected in the previous eight months.
The total is 150 percent higher than in the same period in 2023, when fire affected 8.98 million hectares. Native vegetation accounts for 73 percent of the burned area, mainly forest formations. Agricultural areas were also affected, with 20.5 percent.
The states of Mato Grosso, Pará, and Tocantins represented more than half of the burned territory, with 5.5 million, 4.6 million, and 2.6 million hectares affected, respectively. The municipality of São Félix do Xingu, in Pará, burned the most, followed by Corumbá, in Mato Grosso do Sul.
The Amazon
Among Brazil’s biomes, the Amazon was the worst affected and accounted for 51 percent of the total fire damage in the first nine months of the year. A total of 11.3 million hectares were burned in the time span.
Ane Alencar, science director at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) and a coordinator at MapBiomas, says that the fire crisis in the region this year has been exacerbated by a more severe drought due to the intensification of climate change.
“This is reflected in the figures for September, in which half of the area burned in the region was in forest formations,” she declared.
Like the rest of the country, the Amazon biome burned the most in September—5.5 million hectares, of which 2.8 million were in forest formations. Among the areas where the soil had already been converted by people, pastures were the most affected by fire, with 1.8 million hectares burned.
The cerrado
In nine months, the cerrado had 8.4 million hectares consumed by fire, of which 4.3 million burned in September, the largest area affected in the last five years for the same month.
“September marks the peak of the drought in the cerrado, and this makes the impact of fire even more severe. With the vegetation extremely dry and vulnerable, fire spreads quickly, resulting in poor air quality in nearby towns,” IPAM researcher and technical coordinator for fire at MapBiomas Vera Arruda pointed out.
The pantanal
According to the average of the last five years, the pantanal was the Brazilian biome that saw the biggest expansion in the area burned in the first nine months of the year. The surge in 2024 was 2,306 percent from the average.
A total of 1.5 million hectares were consumed by fire, of which 318 thousand hectares were affected in September, when 92 percent of the burned area was native vegetation.
Other biomes
Of all the territory affected by fire, the Atlantic forest saw 896 thousand hectares burned, the majority of which, 71 percent, was agricultural land. The caatinga and the pampas, on the other hand, saw a reduction in the area affected by fires from January to September 2024—151 thousand hectares and 3,100 hectares affected respectively.
