Satellite image of smoke streaming from a number of fires southwest of Boa Vista (the capital of the Brazilian state of Roraima) recorded on February 22, 2024, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASAs Terra satellite.Huge understory fires are spreading out throughout the state in northern Brazil as drought and heat turn the jungle into tinder.Roraima– Brazils northernmost state– has a wet environment, which assists rainforests thrive and suppresses the natural incident of forest fires, even during the dry season. Nevertheless, remote sensing researchers have actually observed fires in this northern Amazon area for as long as satellite observations have been available, particularly during the drier months of October through March. Most are management fires, fired up for purposes such as burning pastures and agricultural locations or clearing rainforest.Recent Intense Fire ActivityIn the second half of February 2024, NASA satellites observed abnormally extensive and intense fire activity in Roraima, according to several fire monitoring platforms, consisting of the SERVIR Amazon Fire Dashboard, the Brazilian Space Agencys Queimadas program, and NASAs Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS). On numerous occasions, satellites observed thick plumes of smoke blanketing much of Roraima. In recent decades, forested landscapes in this fast-changing state have actually become increasingly fragmented by brand-new roadways, pastures, and farmland as cities such as Boa Vista, Caracaraí, and Rorainópolis have expanded.The image at the top of the page, acquired by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASAs Terra satellite, shows smoke streaming from numerous fires southwest of Boa Vista on February 22, 2024. The false-color (bands 7-5-2) image below, caught by the OLI-2 (Operational Land Imager-2) on Landsat 9, reveals the burn scar produced by a large fire burning near Boa Vista on February 23, 2024. Satellite picture of a burn scar developed by a big fire burning near Boa Vista recorded on February 23, 2024, by the Operational Land Imager-2 on Landsat 9. Satellite Observations and Environmental ImpactAccording to data from Brazils National Institute for Space Research, the MODIS on NASAs Aqua satellite detected more than 2,057 active fires in Roraima in February 2024. That number is five times the average for February and well above the previous record of 1,347 from February 2007. The intensity and size of a lot of the fires are also uncommon. The European Commissions Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), a system based on MODIS observations from the Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS), approximated that fires in Brazil launched more than 4.1 megatons of carbon into the atmosphere in February 2024, the greatest February regular monthly overall on record since 2003. Roughly half of those carbon emissions came from the fires in Roraima. “Most management fires you might find in this area during a normal year would cover simply a couple of square kilometers, but were seeing fires this year that started in pastures or just recently cleared jungle and then spread out into the surrounding rainforest locations that are burning hundreds of square kilometers,” said Shane Coffield, a postdoc at NASAs Goddard Space Flight. “These are big wildfires– and theyre devastating for the communities and air quality.”The flames of understory fires in the southern Amazon reach on average only a couple of feet high, but the fire type can declare anywhere from 10 to 50 percent of a burn locations trees. Credit: NASA/Doug MortonFor contrast, 100 square kilometers has to do with 30 times the size of Central Park in New York City. Forest fires in this location burn in the jungle understory without completely consuming the canopy, but they can harm rainforests by killing a big percentage of trees and triggering damage that persists for decades.Since Amazon forest fires take place under the canopy, they can be difficult for satellite sensors like MODIS or VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) to identify. Orbiting sensing units with higher spatial resolution, such as the OLI (Operational Land Imager) or OLI-2 on Landsat 8 or 9 and the MSI (Multi Spectral Instrument) on Sentinel-2, can assist due to the fact that they can more easily detect the signature of fire through spaces in the canopy.The false-color image below programs an understory fire that burned widely in the jungle (green) after escaping from a pasture (yellow) along the BR-432 road near Vila Nova Paraiso. Active fire fronts appear orange, and burned areas are brown. The image was gotten by the OLI on Landsat 8 on February 23, 2024.”The situation is vital here,” stated Haron Abrahim Magalhães Xaud, a remote noticing scientist at the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) in Boa Vista. “Weve broken the monthly record for total satellite detections of fire since the start of the MODIS record in 2000, and the federal government of Roraima has actually stated a state of emergency situation in 9 towns due to drought and forest fires.”Satellite picture of a fire along the BR-432 roadway near Vila Nova Paraiso captured on February 23, 2024, by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8. Outbreaks of fire at this scale and intensity are generally exacerbated by weather condition and climate conditions, and this year is no exception. Extreme dry spell has plagued the Amazon Basin since mid-2023, partly because the continuous El Niño simmering in the Pacific has actually moved rains far from this location. Drought is also severe because human-caused global warming has added additional heat to the region and helped develop conditions where fires can flourish and spread quickly.”Amazon regions like Roraima that receive less rains during an El Niño year are poised to have longer and more powerful dry seasons, increasing the danger that management fires spread out of control and burn into the jungle,” said Douglas Morton, an earth scientist at NASA Goddard. Extreme fire activity in the northern Amazon early in the calendar year is generally followed by an uptick in fire activity in the southern Amazon in July through September, often months after the end of El Niño conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean, he added.Challenges in Fire Detection and Future ProspectsAs conditions change across the Amazon, earth scientists and fire supervisors in Brazil and all over the world will be tracking Amazon fire activity using tools powered by satellite observations. “I check FIRMS, the SERVIR Amazon Fire Dashboard, INPEs BD-Queimadas, and the CENSIPAM Fire Dashboard (Painel do Fogo) every day,” Xaud stated. “The benefit of the SERVIR and CENSIPAM control panels is that they supply event-level info, making it easier to picture and track individual fires.”Morton and Coffield are not just tracking the current fire activity using existing tools. Theyre also in the procedure of trying to construct even much better ones. Coffield is currently fine-tuning fire detection techniques and dealing with a brand-new visualization tool– a prototype is readily available here– based upon Landsat 8 & & 9 and Sentinel-2 observations that the researchers hope will ultimately make it much easier to recognize understory forest fires and make it easier to quickly compare fire types.NASA Earth Observatory images by Wanmei Liang, utilizing MODIS information from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview and Landsat information from the U.S. Geological Survey.
Satellite image of smoke streaming from a number of fires southwest of Boa Vista (the capital of the Brazilian state of Roraima) caught on February 22, 2024, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASAs Terra satellite.Huge understory fires are spreading out throughout the state in northern Brazil as dry spell and heat turn the rain forest into tinder.Roraima– Brazils northernmost state– has a damp climate, which helps jungles grow and reduces the natural occurrence of forest fires, even during the dry season. A lot of are management fires, fired up for functions such as burning pastures and farming locations or clearing rainforest.Recent Intense Fire ActivityIn the 2nd half of February 2024, NASA satellites observed extreme and abnormally extensive fire activity in Roraima, according to numerous fire tracking platforms, consisting of the SERVIR Amazon Fire Dashboard, the Brazilian Space Agencys Queimadas program, and NASAs Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS). The European Commissions Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), a system based on MODIS observations from the Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS), approximated that fires in Brazil launched more than 4.1 megatons of carbon into the environment in February 2024, the greatest February month-to-month total on record given that 2003. Severe fire activity in the northern Amazon early in the calendar year is normally followed by an uptick in fire activity in the southern Amazon in July through September, often months after the end of El Niño conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean, he added.Challenges in Fire Detection and Future ProspectsAs conditions alter throughout the Amazon, earth researchers and fire supervisors in Brazil and around the world will be tracking Amazon fire activity utilizing tools powered by satellite observations. “I check FIRMS, the SERVIR Amazon Fire Dashboard, INPEs BD-Queimadas, and the CENSIPAM Fire Dashboard (Painel do Fogo) every day,” Xaud said.