{"id":1787666,"date":"2019-08-29T09:50:41","date_gmt":"2019-08-29T13:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/?p=1787666"},"modified":"2020-08-26T18:57:03","modified_gmt":"2020-08-26T22:57:03","slug":"mapping-the-amazon-fires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2019\/08\/mapping-the-amazon-fires\/","title":{"rendered":"Mapping the Amazon Fires"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s start with the current situation map<\/a> from Brazil\u2019s own space agency, the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espacias (INPE), which I\u2019m surprised is still online. In July Brazil\u2019s president, Jair Bolsonaro, accused the widely respected agency of lying about the scale of deforestation in the Amazon; INPE\u2019s chief, Ricardo Galv\u00e3o, was forced out earlier this month<\/a> after defending the agency<\/a>. After that, INPE said that fires were up 84 percent<\/a> over the same period last year. (The ESA, for its part, tracked nearly four times as many fires<\/a> in August as they did last year.)<\/p>\n

Other raw data sources include the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), fire activity data from which can be viewed here<\/a>; and MODIS data from NASA\u2019s Terra and Aqua satellites. For a live feed of MODIS data on the Amazon fires, see the MODIS Wildfire Dashboard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Meanwhile, NASA\u2019s Earth Observatory posted MODIS imagery of several Amazon fires<\/a>, and had this curious statement that seemed to minimize the scale of the problem: \u201cAs of August 16, 2019, an analysis of NASA satellite data indicated that total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years. […] Though activity appears to be above average in the states of Amazonas and Rond\u00f4nia, it has so far appeared below average in Mato Grosso and Par\u00e1, according to estimates from the Global Fire Emissions Database,<\/a> a research project that compiles and analyzes NASA data.\u201d<\/p>\n

A subsequent NASA Earth Observatory post<\/a> seems to contradict the one I mentioned earlier, pointing to \u201ca noticeable increase in large, intense, and persistent fires burning along major roads in the central Brazilian Amazon\u201d which \u201care more consistent with land clearing than with regional drought\u201d and noted fire detections \u201chigher across the Brazilian Amazon\u201d since 2010.<\/p>\n

Contextualizing the amount of fires seems to be a recurring theme in the reporting: the number of fires are up sharply over last year, but close to the average when taking a longer view. It\u2019s helped a lot of bad and insincere actors make it harder to get to the heart of what\u2019s going on over there. They can\u2019t, after all, deny the satellite imagery or the remote sensing: we can see<\/em> the fires. We can detect the emissions of smoke, carbon dioxide<\/a> and carbon monoxide (1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, 3<\/a>). We can map<\/em> them. And those maps can help us understand what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n