September 5, 2022 - Fires and Deforestation in Brazil and Bolivia

Fires
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Smoke and fires continue to mark increasing deforestation in the Amazon
Rainforest through early September 2022. According to Global Forest
Watch, there were 6,423,870 integrated deforestation alerts reported in
Brazil between August 24, 2022, and August 31, 2022. This covered a
total of 77.7 hectares. 8.2 percent of these alerts were considered
“high confidence” detected by a single system and 2.1 percent were
detected by multiple systems. That translates to 526,727 “high
confidence” alerts and 134,901 confirmed by multiple systems. These
alerts are not just fire, but also watch for canopy disturbance and
other parameters that signal potential deforestation is happening in
near-real time.

On September 1, 2022, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of
a hazy pall stretching across both Bolivia (west) and Brazil (east).
Each red “hot spot” marks an area where the thermal bands on the MODIS
instrument detected high temperatures. When combined with typical
smoke, as in this image, such hot spots mark actively burning fire.
Despite the cover of smoke, which is thick in some areas, hundreds of
hot spots are visible in just this one section of the Amazon.

Most of the territory in this image belongs to the Brazilian state of
Mato Grosso, which is located on the southeastern edge of the Amazon.
One driving factor in deforestation in this region is agriculture,
particularly soy farming. According to an article by the Monitoring of
the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) published online in June 2022, “The
Amazon Soy Moratorium has often been credited with significantly
reducing soy-related deforestation in the Amazon over the past 15
years. The Moratorium is a voluntary zero-deforestation agreement in
which traders agree not to purchase soy grown on land cleared after
2008.” However, soy prices are increasing, resulting in increasing
pressure to grow the product—and increasing pressure to tear down the
Amazon for farming and profits. In their report, MAAP reported that
there was an additional direct deforestation due to soy of at least
42,000 hectares in the Brazilian Amazon since 2020, with all of this in
the state of Mato Grosso. Recent major fire activity in recently
deforested areas signaled burning in preparation for the upcoming
planting season.

Despite recent commitments from Brazil to strongly rein in
deforestation and destruction of the Amazon, fires in Brazil’s
rainforests are reportedly increasing this year. In addition, fires and
deforestation are reported to be encroaching on protected forests as
well as indigenous land. An article published by The Washington Post on
August 30, 2022, describes the frustration of inspectors and impotence
of attempting to enforce any environmental regulation designed to
protect Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. The compelling investigative story
states, “The violent and lawless erasure of the Amazon is perhaps the
world’s greatest environmental crime story. Scientists warn that the
forest, seen as vital to averting catastrophic global warming, is at a
tipping point. But in Brazil, home to about 60 percent of the Amazon,
nearly one-fifth has already been destroyed. And virtually no one, law
enforcement officials say, has been held accountable.”

Image Facts
Satellite: Terra
Date Acquired: 9/1/2022
Resolutions: 1km (480.1 KB), 500m (1.7 MB),
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC



https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2022-09-05

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