Brazil sees 79% surge in burned areas in 2024
Brazil recorded a 79 percent expansion in burned areas within its territory from January to December 2024, compared to the same time span in the previous year. A total of 30.8 million hectares were affected by fire during this period, as per data released Wednesday (Jan. 22) by MapBiomas.
The burned area is larger than the territory of Italy and the largest since 2019. The increase represents a growth of 13.6 million hectares from 2023. Most of the Brazilian territory consumed by fire (73%) consisted of native vegetation, mainly forest formations.
The surge in burned areas is said to be linked to a long dry period faced by the country as a result of the El Niño—an abnormal warming of the surface and sub-surface waters of the Pacific—which occurred from 2023 to 2024.
“The impact of this devastation exposes the urgent need for coordinated action and engagement at all levels if we are to contain an environmental crisis exacerbated by extreme weather conditions and triggered by human action, as was the case last year,” explained Ane Alencar, MapBiomas coordinator for fire.
The Brazilian state hardest hit by fire last year was Pará, followed by Mato Grosso and Tocantins—7.3 million, 6.8 million and 2.7 million hectares burned respectively. In December alone, the country had an area equivalent to a territory slightly smaller than Lebanon consumed by fire. The period accounted for 3.6 percent of the entire area burned in the country—1.1 million hectares.
Brazilian biomes
In the Amazon alone, 17.9 million hectares were burned—over half (58%) of the area affected in Brazil. In the biome, some 6.8 million hectares affected were covered by forest, surpassing the burning of pastures, which totaled 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 noting that fire in the Amazon is not a natural phenomenon, nor is it part of its ecological dynamics. It’s an element introduced by human action,” said Felipe Martenexen, fire researcher at MapBiomas.
In December, the Amazon biome accounted for 88 percent of what was burned in Brazil, 37.5 percent of which was forest—in absolute terms, 964 thousand hectares burned in the Amazon, of which 361 thousand hectares were woodland.
In the cerrado, 9.7 million hectares were burned, 85 percent of which was native vegetation, mainly savannah formations. Compared to 2023, there was a 91 percent rise in the area burned, the largest since 2019.
“Historically, the cerrado is a biome that evolved with the presence of fire, but fire in a natural way, which would be caused, for example, by lightning, during the transition from the dry to rainy seasons. What we can see is that the area burned has expanded significantly, especially during the dry season, driven mainly by human activities and climate change,” Vera Arruda, researcher at MapBiomas, noted.
Last year, the pantanal had 1.9 million hectares affected by fire; the Atlantic forest, 1 million; the pampa, 3.4 thousand; and the caatinga, 330 thousand.
According to MapBiomas researcher Eduardo Vélez, since the beginning of the time series in 2019, this was the smallest area burned in the pampa. “This pattern is associated with the strong effects of the El Niño, which, in southern Brazil, manifested itself in the opposite way. Large amounts of precipitation accumulated in the first half of 2024, when the floods of May 2024 occurred,” Vélez pointed out.
