Brazil’s Amazon basin endured its worst-ever forest fire season in 2024, according to the latest Annual Fire Report from MapBiomas. The study reveals that the nationwide burned area jumped 62 percent above the historical average of 18.5 million hectares per year, with the Amazon shouldering the single largest share of loss since mapping began in 1985.
Half of all the area burned in Brazil over the past forty years occurred during the last decade, underscoring a worrying acceleration of fire events. Between 1985 and 2024, fires scarred 206 million hectares across Brazil’s six biomes.
Of that total, 69.5 percent occurred in native vegetation, equivalent to 514 million hectares. In 2024 alone, 21.8 million hectares of native vegetation burned (72.7 percent of the year’s total burned area), the steepest ratio on record.
In 2024, the Brazilian Amazon had its highest annual fires in almost 40 years
In the Amazon, 2024 marked the highest annual burned area in the biome’s nearly 40-year record. “Fire is not part of the natural ecological dynamics of Amazonian forests,” said Felipe Martenexen, Amazon mapping coordinator at MapBiomas.
“These fires are the result of human activity, exacerbated by two consecutive years of severe drought.” The Amazon forest formations bore the brunt, with 7.7 million hectares burend–287 percent above the historical average for that vegetation type.
The Atlantic Forest also reached a four-decade peak, with 1.32 million hectares burned, 261 percent above its long-term average. “Natural areas in the Atlantic Forest are especially vulnerable,” said Natalia Crusco of the MapBiomas Atlantic Forest team. “When fires occur, they inflict heavy damage on the biome’s already scarce forest remnants.”
The Pantanal region was the most severely burned
Proportionally, the Pantanal region in Brazil’s Amazon has suffered most from fires over the past 40 years. Nearly 62 percent of its territory burned at least once, and 93 percent of those fires occurred in native vegetation, particularly in flooded grasslands and campo formations. Meanwhile, the Cerrado exhibited the highest recurrence, 3.7 million hectares burned more than 16 times since 1985. “Of particular concern is the advance of fire into Cerrado forests, which in 2024 saw their largest burned area in seven years,” noted Vera Arruda, technical coordinator of MapBiomas Fire. Semi-arid Caatinga saw 11.15 million hectares burned since 1985, 13 percent of its total area, with 38 percent of those lands burning multiple times.
The Pampa recorded the smallest footprint, with just 495,000 hectares burned which is 3% of the biome, and remained below its 15,300-hectare annual average despite a slight uptick over 2023. “Although fires occur on a smaller scale in the Pampa, catastrophic blazes can still ravage wetlands and biomass-rich grasslands during the driest months,” said Eduardo Vélez of MapBiomas Pampa.
Overall, 64 percent of Brazil’s burned areas were hit more than once between 1985 and 2024, reflecting a troubling pattern of fire recurrence. The MapBiomas analysis, based on satellite-derived fire scars, paints a stark picture of human-driven fire dynamics across Brazil’s diverse ecosystems and signals an urgent need for strengthened fire management and drought-resilience measures.