Drivers of Fire Anomalies in the Brazilian Amazon: Lessons Learned from the 2019 Fire Crisis

Silveira, Marcus Vinicius de Freitas; Petri, Caio Arlanche; Broggio, Igor S.; Chagas, Gabriel O.; Macul, Mateus S.; Leite, Cândida; Ferrari, Edson Maurício Marques; Amim, Carolina G. V.; Freitas, Ana Larissa Ribeiro de; Motta, Alline Zagnoli; Carvalho, Luiza Marina Esteves de; Silva, Celso; Anderson, Liana O.; Aragão, Luiz E. O. C.

doi:10.3390/land9120516

Cited by 61 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…The increase in extreme fire activity which we also found in 2019 (Fig. 3a) has been associated with increasing deforestation rates by several studies [59][60][61]. In agreement with that, we find 34% more deforested area in 2019 than in the previous year, and the highest deforestation rate since 2009 (Fig.…”

Section: Temporal Variabilitysupporting

confidence: 91%

Spatio-temporal patterns of extreme fires in Amazonian forests

Cano-Crespo

Traxl

Thonicke

2021

Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Top.

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Fires are a fundamental part of the Earth System. In the last decades, they have been altering ecosystem structure, biogeochemical cycles and atmospheric composition with unprecedented rapidity. In this study, we implement a complex networks-based methodology to track individual fires over space and time. We focus on extreme fires—the 5% most intense fires—in the tropical forests of the Brazilian Legal Amazon over the period 2002–2019. We analyse the interannual variability in the number and spatial patterns of extreme forest fires in years with diverse climatic conditions and anthropogenic pressure to examine potential synergies between climate and anthropogenic drivers. We observe that major droughts, that increase forest flammability, co-occur with high extreme fire years but also that it is fundamental to consider anthropogenic activities to understand the distribution of extreme fires. Deforestation fires, fires escaping from managed lands, and other types of forest degradation and fragmentation provide the ignition sources for fires to ignite in the forests. We find that all extreme forest fires identified are located within a 0.5-km distance from forest edges, and up to 56% of them are within a 1-km distance from roads (which increases to 73% within 5 km), showing a strong correlation that defines spatial patterns of extreme fires.

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Section: Temporal Variabilitysupporting

confidence: 91%

Spatio-temporal patterns of extreme fires in Amazonian forests

Cano-Crespo

Traxl

Thonicke

2021

Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Top.

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“…In 2019, there is no municipality without roads detected, even those where access is fluvial or aerial. The expansion of roads in isolated municipalities raises concerns about the lack of government planning and monitoring, which will lead to deforestation and uncontrolled forest fragmentation, real estate speculation, extractive logging operations, increased risk of fire, and loss of biodiversity and carbon, without guaranteeing economic and social development for the region [9,[26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33].…”

Section: Increase In Roads In the Southwestern Amazonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Roads in the Southwestern Amazon, State of Acre, between 2007 and 2019

Nascimento

Silva

Bordignon

et al. 2021

Land

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Over the past 40 years, roads have been the main driver behind the State of Acre’s occupation and development. However, the expansion of roads, has often been associated with the advance of deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and social conflicts. There are no up-to-date data available on the current extent of Acre’s road network nor its environmental and socioenvironmental impacts. In this study, we updated the State of Acre’s road network map for the period 2007 to 2019 through the visual interpretation of 153 Landsat images (5, 7, and 8) at a scale of 1:50,000. To estimate the impact of roads, we measured the distribution of roads in municipalities and in different land tenure categories and calculated the correlation between roads and annual deforestation. Up to 2019, we estimated 19,620 km of roads, of which 92% were unofficial roads, 6% federal roads, and 2% state roads. The roads increased at an average annual rate of 590 km year−1. The most significant advance in road length between 2007 and 2019 was in protected areas (240%), followed by public lands (68%) and settlement projects (66%). We recommend monitoring of the road network to understand the landscape’s evolution and support actions against illicit environmental and socioenvironmental impacts.

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“…All the above mentioned aspects make Brazil a very unique, interesting and challenging backdrop for fire meteorology. Especially the more recent 2019 and 2020 fires have brought discussions on fires in Brazil to the forefront (Durigan, 2020;Silveira et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying local‐scale meteorological conditions favorable to large fires in Brazil

Rifai

Anderson

et al. 2021

Climate Resilience

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This study aims to investigate local-scale meteorological conditions associated with large fires in Brazil during recent decades. We assess whether there are large fire types with preceding predictors. Our results show that large fires, defined with a threshold of a daily burned area >95th percentile of the historical record, mainly occur in August and September in Brazil, and Amazônia and Cerrado experience much higher numbers of large fires than the other biomes. There are two large fire types that have robust meteorological signatures: (1) a wind driven type, characterized by peak wind speed on the day of the fire, and anomalously high wind speed a few (∼3) days before and after the fire; and (2) a Hot-Drought driven type, characterized by anomalously high temperature, low relative humidity, and consistent drought conditions indicated by anomalously high fuel aridity starting as far back as 5 months prior to the fires. A third one is characterized by no anomalous meteorological conditions. The wind driven type most frequently occurs in southern and southeastern Amazônia, Pantanal, and western and northern-to-central Cerrado, with some occurrences over the western Caatinga region bordering Cerrado, southern Cerrado, and southern Mata Atlântica; whereas the Hot-Drought driven type most frequently occurs in southern and southeastern Amazônia, Pantanal and western and northern-to-central Cerrado, with some occurrences over the western Caatinga region bordering Cerrado, southern Cerrado, central-tosouthern Mata Atlântica, and a few occurrences over Northern Brazil where the Amazônia meets Roraima. Southern and southeastern Amazônia, Pantanal and western and northern-to-central Cerrado are the major large fire prone regions. Our results highlight that understanding the temporal and spatial variability of the meteorological conditions associated with large fires is essential for developing spatially explicit forecasting, and future projections of large fire hazards under climate change in Brazil, in particular the Hot-Drought driven type.

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Drivers of Fire Anomalies in the Brazilian Amazon: Lessons Learned from the 2019 Fire Crisis

Cited by 61 publications

References 46 publications

Spatio-temporal patterns of extreme fires in Amazonian forests

Spatio-temporal patterns of extreme fires in Amazonian forests

Roads in the Southwestern Amazon, State of Acre, between 2007 and 2019

Identifying local‐scale meteorological conditions favorable to large fires in Brazil

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