2020 Brazil rainforest wildfires

2020 Brazil rainforest wildfires
Image of August 1, 2020, from the MODIS satellite.
Date(s)January 2020 - August 2020
LocationAmazonas and Pantanal
Satellite image showing the smoke from the Pantanal fires on September 14, 2020.[1]

The 2020 Brazil rainforest wildfires were a series of forest fires that were affecting Brazil, with 44,013 outbreaks of fires registered between January and August in the Amazonas and Pantanal.[2][3] Within the Amazon, 6,315 outbreaks of fire were detected in the same period.[4] Within the Pantanal, the volume of fires is equivalent to those of the past six years[5] and there have been actions by NGOs and volunteers to save endangered animals, such as the jaguar.[6] It was expected that the health systems of the Amazon region, already overloaded by the COVID-19 pandemic, would be even more overloaded due to respiratory diseases due to smoke emitted by the wildfires.[7][8]

Expertise carried out points out that the fires in the Pantanal were started by human action[9] and the Environmental Police Station investigates who are possibly responsible.[10]

Douglas Morton, head of NASA's Biospheric Sciences Laboratory, considers fires to be "unprecedented".[11] Although the Brazilian government has instituted a 120-day ban on burning in the Amazon, an analysis led by NASA indicates that this was of little effect.[12][13]

Between May 28 and August 25, 516 fire points were detected covering an area of 376,416 hectares.[14]

In August, President Jair Bolsonaro's response was that "the media and foreign governments are presenting a false narrative about the Amazon".[15] The same month Brazil's National Institute for Space Research reported that satellite data shows that the number of fires in the Amazon increased by 28% to ~6,800 fires in July compared to the ~5,300 wildfires in July 2019. This indicated a, potentially worsened, repeat of 2019's accelerated destruction of one of the world's largest protectable buffers against global warming in 2020.[16][17][18] Satellites in September recorded 32,017 hotspots in the world's largest rainforest, a 61% rise from the same month in 2019.

In September INPE reported that 1,359 km2 of the Brazilian Amazon have burned off in August, which may put the effectiveness of the contemporary response against the deforestation – such as considerations of economic interventions and the current military operation – into question.[19] The 6,087 km2 of lost rainforest in 2020 as of early September – ~95% of the period in 2019[19] – is about the size of Palestine.

In the Pantanal, part of the fire started in private areas or legal reserves (which is protected by law) and spread to indigenous territories.[20] On 13 September preliminary data based on satellite images, indicate that 1.5 million hectares have burned in the Pantanal region since the start of August, surpassing the previous fire season record from 2005.[21] On September 15 it was reported that 23,500 km2 – ~12% of the Pantanal – have burned off in 2020,[22] killing millions of vertebrates.[23]

  1. ^ "EOSDIS Worldview". worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov. Retrieved 20 September 2020.
  2. ^ "Agosto atinge recorde de focos de Incêndio no ano; AC e Pantanal preocupam" [August reaches record number of fire outbreaks in the year; AC and Pantanal worry] (in Brazilian Portuguese). 2020-09-01. Archived from the original on 2020-09-13. Retrieved 2020-09-12.
  3. ^ "Brazil Fires Burn World's Largest Tropical Wetlands at 'Unprecedend' Scale". The New York Times. 2020-09-04. Archived from the original on 2020-09-07. Retrieved 2020-09-12.
  4. ^ "Amazônia em Chamas 20: Queimadas consomem árvores e animais no sul do Amazonas" [Amazonia on Fire 20: Burning consumes trees and animals in southern Amazonas] (in Brazilian Portuguese). 2020-09-17. Archived from the original on 2020-08-19. Retrieved 2020-09-12.
  5. ^ "Volume de queimadas no Pantanal em 2020 equivale à destruição dos últimos seis anos" [Volume of fires in the Pantanal in 2020 is equivalent to the destruction of the last six years] (in Brazilian Portuguese). 2020-09-08. Archived from the original on 2020-09-10. Retrieved 2020-09-12.
  6. ^ "Fogo avança nos últimos redutos de onças no Pantanal" [Fire advances in the last redoubts of jaguars in the Pantanal] (in Brazilian Portuguese). 2020-09-12. Archived from the original on 2020-09-13. Retrieved 2020-09-12.
  7. ^ "Em meio à covid-19, queimadas na Amazônia ampliam risco de morte e de colapso hospitalar por doença respiratória" [Amidst covid-19, burning in the Amazon increases risk of death and hospital collapse due to respiratory disease] (in Brazilian Portuguese). 2020-05-08. Archived from the original on 2020-08-07. Retrieved 2020-09-12.
  8. ^ "Brazil: Amazon Fires Affect Health of Thousands". 2020-08-26. Archived from the original on 2020-09-03. Retrieved 2020-09-13.
  9. ^ "Perícia aponta que incêndios no Pantanal de MT foram provocados por ação humana" [Expertise points out that fires in the Pantanal of MT were caused by human action]. 2020-09-05. Archived from the original on 2020-09-08. Retrieved 2020-09-12.
  10. ^ "Polícia investiga responsáveis por focos de incêndio que deram início a grandes queimadas no Pantanal de MT" [Police investigate those responsible for outbreaks of fire that started large fires in the Pantanal of MT] (in Brazilian Portuguese). 2020-09-12. Archived from the original on 2020-09-13. Retrieved 2020-09-12.
  11. ^ "The Fires in Brazil Are Just As Bad This Year". 2020-09-08. Archived from the original on 2020-09-12. Retrieved 2020-09-12.
  12. ^ "A New Tool for Tracking Amazon Fires". 19 August 2020. Archived from the original on 2020-08-20. Retrieved 2020-09-13.
  13. ^ "Brazil: Alarming number of new forest fires detected ahead of Amazon Day". 2020-09-03. Archived from the original on 2020-09-04. Retrieved 2020-09-13.
  14. ^ "Bleak milestone: 500 major fires detected in Brazilian Amazon this year". 2020-08-26. Archived from the original on 2020-08-28. Retrieved 2020-09-13.
  15. ^ "Brazil's Bolsonaro calls surging Amazon fires a 'lie'". Reuters. 2020-08-11. Archived from the original on 2020-08-12. Retrieved 2020-09-13.
  16. ^ "Fires in Brazil's Amazon rainforest surge in July, worst in recent days". Reuters. 7 August 2020. Retrieved 9 September 2020.
  17. ^ "Brazilian Amazon protected areas 'in flames' as land-grabbers invade". Mongabay Environmental News. 7 August 2020. Retrieved 9 September 2020.
  18. ^ Pedroso, Rodrigo; Reverdosa, Marcia. "Bolsonaro says reports of Amazon fires are a 'lie.' Evidence says otherwise". CNN. Retrieved 9 September 2020.
  19. ^ a b "New worry over August deforestation in Brazilian Amazon". phys.org. Retrieved 12 October 2020.
  20. ^ "Incêndios já tomam quase metade das terras indígenas no Pantanal" [Fires already take over almost half of the indigenous lands in the Pantanal]. Agência Pública (in Brazilian Portuguese). September 17, 2020. Archived from the original on September 17, 2020. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  21. ^ "Battle on to save Brazil's tropical wetlands from flames". phys.org. Retrieved 12 October 2020.
  22. ^ "Desperate race against fires in world's biggest tropical wetlands". phys.org. Retrieved 12 October 2020.
  23. ^ Tomas, Walfrido Moraes; Berlinck, Christian Niel; Chiaravalloti, Rafael Morais; Faggioni, Gabriel Paganini; Strüssmann, Christine; Libonati, Renata; Abrahão, Carlos Roberto; do Valle Alvarenga, Gabriela; de Faria Bacellar, Ana Elisa; de Queiroz Batista, Flávia Regina; Bornato, Thainan Silva (2021-12-16). "Distance sampling surveys reveal 17 million vertebrates directly killed by the 2020's wildfires in the Pantanal, Brazil". Scientific Reports. 11 (1): 23547. Bibcode:2021NatSR..1123547T. doi:10.1038/s41598-021-02844-5. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 8677733. PMID 34916541.