NASA Images Show Massive Habitat Loss, Including in Vital Pantanal Region
Satellite surveillance shows that parts of South America have suffered a record number of wildfires this year.
Brazil’s space research agency Inpe has recorded 346,112 South American wildfires for 2024. This breaks the former record (using the same cutoff date) of 345,332, set in 2007, Reuters News Agency said in a September 12 report. Data has been collected from all 13 South American nations since 1998.
The devastation has impacted the Pantanal, recognized by scientists as the world's largest continuous wetland, and other areas considered to be “biodiversity hot spots.”
Brazil and Bolivia have sent thousands of firefighters to the area. However, Reuters reported that “hundreds” protested in La Paz, Bolivia, to demand more action against the fires, most of which were started by humans.
"Please realize what is really happening in the country; we have lost millions of hectares," said animal-rights activist Fernanda Negron, who added that there are fears that "millions of animals have been burned to death."
Earlier in 2024, NASA reported that “unusually early and intense blazes” had spread over Brazil’s Pantanal region in late May and early June 2024 “well before” the area’s typical fire season begins (July through September). The unusually dry conditions were due to a shortage of typical wet-season rainfall.
Ana Paul Cunha, a drought researcher with Cemaden, told Reuters that the 2023-2024 drought was “the most intense, long-lasting in some regions and extensive in recent history, at least in the data since 1950."
NASA scientists blamed the dry weather on this year’s El Niño, as well as a “warmer-than-usual sea surface in the northern Atlantic Ocean,” which together have drawn rainfall away from the Amazon and surrounding biomes.
“From October through April, that region [Mato Grosso do Sul and neighboring Mato Grosso] received a meter less rain than expected,” said NASA Earth system scientist Douglas Morton of the Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
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The natural-color image below was captured by MODIS aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite on June 9, 2024. Smoke can be seen blowing south toward Corumbá, in Mato Grosso do Sul.
NASA compares the Pantanal in size to the US state of West Virginia. The area is considered vital to important hydrological ecosystem services such as water cycle regulation, flood control, and water-quality maintenance.
The Pantanal is known for its naturally rich ecosystems that are home to thousands of species, including jaguars, tapirs, capybaras, giant otters, maned wolves, hyacinth macaws, Toco toucans, and giant armadillos.
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