The pockets of fire accumulated in the Amazon until September is the largest since 2010, show data from Inpe Amazonas

Furthermore, from January to Thursday (8), the Amazon had almost the same number of outbreaks recorded throughout 2019: 81,805 versus 89,176 seen last year.

September is historically the month with the most forest fires. This year, there were 32,017 fires in the forest from September 1 to September 30, an increase of 61% over September 2019. The number was slightly below the historical average for the month, which is 32,812 outbreaks.

The largest number of outbreaks ever recorded in September occurred in 2007, when there were 73,141 fire points. Inpe has been monitoring fire data in all Brazilian biomes since 1998.

Last month was also the worst ever in terms of the number of fires in the Pantanal: 6,048 records were recorded. The previous monthly record was 5,993, as of August 2005.

Last month, the Legal Amazon had an area of 964 km² under deforestation alert, the second highest number in five years.

The alerts were made by the Real Time Deforestation Detection System (Deter), which produces daily signals of change in forest cover for areas larger than 3 hectares (0.03 km²), both for fully deforested areas and for those in process. forest degradation (logging, mining, burning and others).

The system indicates areas with devastation marks that must be inspected by Ibama, and not official deforestation rates. which are usually larger than those engraved by Deter.

• SATELLITES: Understand how satellites that monitor deforestation in the Amazon work

The Legal Amazon corresponds to 59% of the Brazilian territory, and includes the area of ​​8 states (Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima and Tocantins) and part of Maranhão. Most of the forest cut down in September was in Pará.

Deforestation and fires are related. Fire is part of the strategy to “clean” the soil that was cleared for later use in livestock or sowing. It’s called the “cycle of deforestation of the Amazon.”

Inpe’s data have sparked clashes with members of the federal government.

On September 30, President Jair Bolsonaro declared, in a speech recorded and presented at the United Nations (UN) biodiversity summit, that organizations, in association with “some NGOs,” command “environmental crimes” in Brazil and also abroad. The president did not provide evidence for the statements.

• Deforestation and fires: understand how INPE data can indicate an increase and decrease in percentages

Four days earlier, the Special Secretariat for Social Communication of the Presidency of the Republic (Secom) published incorrect information on the fires registered in the country in 2020.The message from the secretariat said that the burned area in the entire national territory was the most small of the last 18 years. .

The statement, however, ignored a fact that appeared in the image published by Secom itself along with the message: 2020 figures refer to the first eight months of the year – January to August. The data for other years, however, considered the twelve months.

This is important because the increase in the number of fires occurs precisely in the second half of the year – more specifically in the months of August, September and October, with the peak in September.