Brazil recorded a 79% increase in burned areas in its territory, between January and December 2024, compared to the same period of the previous year. According to data from the MapBiomas Fire Monitor, released this Wednesday (22), 30.8 million hectares were affected by fire during this period.
The extent of the burned area is greater than that of the territory of Italy and the largest recorded since 2019. The increase represents an increase of 13.6 million hectares of what the fire reached in 2023. The majority of the Brazilian territory consumed by fire, 73% , was native vegetation, mainly forest formations.
According to the researchers, the increase in burned areas is related to a long dry period faced by the country as a result of the El Niño phenomenon – abnormal warming of the surface and sub-surface waters of the Pacific Ocean –, which occurred between 2023 and 2024. “’The The impacts of this devastation expose the urgency of coordinated actions and engagement at all levels to contain an environmental crisis exacerbated by extreme weather conditions, but triggered by human action as was the case last year”, explained the coordinator of MapBiomas Fogo, Ane Alencar.
The state most affected by fire last year was Pará, followed by Mato Grosso and Tocantins, with 7.3 million, 6.8 million and 2.7 million hectares of burned area, respectively. In December alone, the country had an area equivalent to a territory slightly smaller than Lebanon consumed by fire. The period concentrated 3.6% of the entire burned area in the country, with 1.1 million hectares.
Biomes
In the Amazon alone, 17.9 million hectares were burned, which corresponds to more than half, 58%, of the affected area in the country. In the biome, around 6.8 million hectares affected were forestry, surpassing the burning of pastures, which was around 5.8 million hectares. “The change in the pattern of fires is alarming, as forest areas affected by fire become more susceptible to new fires. It is worth highlighting that fire in the Amazon is not a natural phenomenon, nor is it part of its ecological dynamics, being an element introduced by human actions”, highlights MapBiomas Fogo researcher Felipe Martenexen,
In December, the Amazon biome accounted for 88% of what was burned in the country, 37.5% of which was forest area. There were 964 thousand hectares of Amazon, of which 361 thousand hectares were forest.
In the Cerrado, 9.7 million hectares were burned, of which 85% were native vegetation, mainly savannah formations. Compared to 2023, there was an increase of 91% in the burned area, being the largest reached since 2019. “Historically, the Cerrado is a biome that evolved with the presence of fire, but fire naturally, which would occur, for example, caused by lightning, during the transition between the dry and rainy seasons. What is observed is that the burned area has increased a lot, especially during the dry season, driven mainly by human activities and climate change”, says Vera Arruda, researcher at Mapbiomas.
Last year, the Pantanal had 1.9 million hectares affected by fire; the Atlantic Forest, 1 million hectares; Pampa, 3.4 thousand hectares; and the Caatinga, 330 thousand hectares.
According to Mapbiomas researcher Eduardo Vélez, since the beginning of the historical series, in 2019, this was the smallest burned area in Pampa. “This pattern is associated with the strong effects of the El Niño phenomenon, which, in southern Brazil, manifests itself in the opposite way. There were large amounts of rain in the first half of 2024, when notably the floods of May 2024 occurred”, recalled Vélez.
