In the first two months of this year, the Amazon biome concentrated 90% of the areas with fires. In all, the perimeter affected by the flames was 487,000 hectares, according to a report today (13) by Monitor do Fogo, an initiative of the Project for Annual Mapping of Land Use and Coverage in Brazil (MapBiomas), in partnership with the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM). In the first two months of 2022, the area totaled 654 thousand hectares.
In the six biomes of the country — Amazon, Caatinga, Cerrado, Atlantic Forest, Pampa and Pantanal –, in 536 thousand hectares, there were outbreaks of fires. As researcher Vera Arruda, from Ipam, points out, the area is 28% smaller than that recorded in the first two months of 2022.
According to researcher Vera, in general, the rains that characterize the first months of the year in the country favor the reduction of fires. “Even so, there are many hectares burned, in a period of more rain”, says the researcher, who is part of the team responsible for Monitor do Fogo.
Another peculiarity of the time is the high rate of occurrences in Roraima. The survey shows that fires in the state consumed 259,000 hectares, that is, 48% of the total identified.
“There is a type of vegetation that is more similar to the Cerrado. It’s not just forests, like in most parts of the Amazon”, explains Vera. In the states of Mato Grosso and Pará, the fire reached areas of 90,000 and 70,000 hectares, respectively. Together, if added to Roraima, they account for 79% of the fires detected by the project team.
The Cerrado ranks second on the list, with 24,000 hectares affected by fire. Asked about what the team considers a margin of tolerance for fires, when it comes to the biome, Vera comments that, in fact, the vegetation has adapted to the presence of fire.
The researcher, however, makes an observation: “The fire that happens today, in recent years, is no longer the fire that would naturally occur in vegetation, because it would occur more due to the presence of lightning. That is, more between seasons. More or less, from May to July. And we see that, in fact, fire in the Cerrado is concentrated at the height of the dry season, between August and September, which are the most critical months for fire in the Cerrado. Most of the fire in vegetation comes from anthropic, human origin, it is not of natural origin.”
“Moreover, even the fire that would occur naturally would occur at intervals and would not burn the same area, repeatedly. What we see, with the Monitor data, is that the frequency of areas burned in the Cerrado is also increasing. This does not allow the vegetation, the ecosystem to recover”, he concludes.
