Twenty-first century droughts have not increasingly exacerbated fire season severity in the Brazilian Amazon.

ABSTRACT: Biomass burning in the Brazilian Amazon is modulated by climate factors, such as droughts, and by human factors, such as deforestation, and land management activities. The increase in forest fires during drought years has led to the hypothesis that fire activity decoupled from deforestation during the twenty-first century. However, assessment of the hypothesis relied on an incorrect active fire dataset, which led to an underestimation of the decreasing trend in fire activity and to an inflated rank for year 2015 in terms of active fire counts. The recent correction of that database warrants a reassessment of the relationships between deforestation and fire. Contrasting with earlier findings, we show that the exacerbating effect of drought on fire season severity did not increase from 2003

SUBMITTER: Libonati R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7902828 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature