October 19, 2022

15:10

Marcela Leiros – Amazon Agency

MANAUS – Mato Grosso was the state that burned the most in Brazil between January and September 2022, concentrating almost 1/4 of the total number of fires in the country in this period (11 million hectares). The Federative Unit (UF) is part of the Legal Amazon and has three biomes: Amazon, Cerrado and Pantanal. The data are from the MapBiomas Fire Monitor report.

Besides Mato Grosso, Pará and Tocantins, which also form the Legal Amazon, are record breakers in fires. They occupy the second and third places in the ranking, respectively, and together represent 57% of the total burned area in the nine-month period. The survey also showed that the common characteristic between these States is that they are located in agricultural frontiers.

As well as the states, not coincidentally the record municipalities are in the Amazon. São Félix do Xingu, Altamira and Novo Progresso, in Pará, were responsible for the burning of a little more than a million hectares, or 9% of the national total. This was an increase of 158% compared to 2021, when these municipalities together burned 407,000 hectares.

Deforestation and fires

The environmentalist and director of WCS Brasil (Wildlife Conservation Association), Carlos Durigan, observes that the advance of deforestation and fires is strongly related to illegal occupation fronts of destined and non- destined public lands, such as conservation units and indigenous lands. But fire is also used for the maintenance of already deforested areas.

“In the absence of effective management and implementation of the Forest Code, what may be happening is an advance of deforestation and burning in the legal reserve areas in rural properties. Besides, in many cases fire is also used to maintain areas already deforested and in use, to renew pastures and clear weeding areas”, he explains.

The environmentalist also remembers the Law Project (PL) 337/22, which excludes the State of Mato Grosso from the Amazon area. “It is also important to remember that a movement arose in Mato Grosso this year to remove the state from the boundaries of the Legal Amazon, and a strong allegation of this movement would be precisely the issue of the need to maintain legal reserves on rural properties”, added Durigan.

Loss of the Amazon

Almost a third (29%, or 1.6 million hectares) of what was burned in the Amazon affected forests, being either fires or deforestation followed by fire. This figure is 106% greater than the area of forest affected by fire in the biome in the same period in 2021 (826,000 hectares).

At the national level, the growth of fires in forests in Brazil was 34%, with about 2 million hectares. Almost all (87%) of these forest fires occurred in the Amazon.

The coordinator of Mapbiomas Fogo and Director of Science at the Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia, the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) pointed out that the risk of increased burning in the biome is that forests may become degraded. Forest degradation is a phenomenon characterized by the partial loss of vegetation in a given location.

“It is important to emphasize that this increase in the area of forest fires in the Amazon in 2022 is a very bad indicator for the region, because these forests are not adapted to fire and end up becoming more susceptible to new fires, becoming degraded”, he affirms.

Almost half of the fires between January and September this year (49%, or 5.7 million hectares) occurred in the Amazon, but the situation in the Cerrado was more worrying. Half the size of the Amazon, the biome had 46% of its vegetation lost to fire, or 5.4 million hectares. Together, they accounted for 95% of the burned area in Brazil by September 2022.

Pastures and agriculture and cattle raising

In all biomes, fires occur preferentially in areas of native vegetation in savannah and grassland formations, which accounted for 69% of the area burned in the period in Brazil. Among the types of agricultural use, pastures stand out, representing 25% of the burned area in the first nine months of 2022.