The Amazonian story of deforestation is far from over and the battle to contain forest fires deliberately set by cattle ranchers has been bolstered by the speeches and beliefs of President Jair Bolsanaro. The fires, set mostly by cattle ranchers have been used to deforest land and develop a revenue stream for Brazil in the meat industry. The dry season increased the number of fires, intensified by human-driven climate change.

Nasa’s FIRMS system (Fire Information for Resource Management System) is an open-source data capture system used for monitoring fires in real-time, including the Amazon (pictured below).

Stanisland has compiled a map of Amazon forest fires in real-time using NASA’s open-source MODIS system, part of the NASA FIRMS project. We will be adding to the map regularly to offer more locations of forest fires worldwide.