July 21, 2026, 9:28 p.mJuly 21, 2026, 9:28 p.m
Forest fires have declined across Brazil over the past year.Image: keystone
In 2025, fewer forest areas will have burned in the Amazon region than since records began 40 years ago. Around 3.1 million hectares were affected by fires last year, around 80 percent fewer than the previous year, according to the annual report of the Brazilian monitoring initiative MapBiomas.
In general, wildfires across Brazil have decreased over the past year. Area burned totaled 12.7 million hectares nationwide, compared with more than 30 million hectares after a severe drought the year before. The numbers are the lowest since 2018.
More water areas recorded
After two years of drought, the area covered by water in the Amazon region would have increased in 2025 due to increased rainfall, the network said in a separate statement. The water area was therefore around 2.6 percent above the historical average.
That is positive. “But despite this recovery, the long-term situation remains worrying, as extreme weather events are becoming more common in the region,” said researcher Bruno Ferreira. Climate change and changes in land use influenced the water situation.
Human activities are often responsible for the fires
According to the MapBiomas fire report, analysis of the past four decades shows that more than 49 percent of the total burned areas were on private rural land, followed by residential areas at around eight percent. Trees are often first felled and the deforested areas are then set on fire to create new pastures and arable land for soybean cultivation, for example. When it is very dry, fires often get out of control.
“Fire is a phenomenon that occurs in various Brazilian ecosystems and is triggered either naturally or by human activities,” the report says. However, Brazil’s tropical rainforests, including the Amazon, had a lower frequency of natural fires than other areas.
The MapBiomas network consists of universities, non-governmental organizations and technology companies and, among other things, evaluates satellite images. (sda/dpa)