Unusually early and intense blazes spread over Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands in late May and early June 2024.
Unusually early and intense blazes spread over Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands in late May and early June 2024. Lack of wet-season rainfall dried vegetation and helped the wildfires spread well before the region’s fire season typically begins.
The Pantanal, a vast floodplain in South America, is a mosaic of lakes, flooded grasslands, shrublands, and forests that covers an area as large as West Virginia. It is home to thousands of species, including jaguars, giant river otters, hyacinth macaws, and giant armadillos.
Fire season in southern Brazil usually starts in July and peaks in August and September. In June 2024, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) observed unusually intense fire activity in the Pantanal. Using data from the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite, INPE detected 549 active fires as of June 11, which is more fire detections than any June in INPE’s record, going back to 1998. These individual fire detections correspond to at least 6 large ongoing fire events (>200 square kilometers), based on data from the SERVIR Amazon Dashboard
Read more at: NASA Earth Observatory
Photo Credit: Michala Garrison, NASA
