World’s largest tropical wetland burned this year

Record-breaking wildfires between January and June burned an ecological foothold — and biodiversity haven — spanning across Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay this year, just four years after similar fires burned 13,300 acres of the preserve.

The Pantanal is considered the world’s largest tropical wetland area, the world’s largest flooded grasslands, and one of the most important areas of freshwater in the world.

NASA captured some of the intense fires’ burn scars in satellite imagery.

“Fire season in southern Brazil usually starts in July and peaks in August and September,” NASA said. “The false-color images emphasize the burn scars (brown) from several of the fires. Unburned vegetation is green. Near- and short-wave infrared bands help penetrate some of the smoke to reveal the hot spots associated with active fires, which appear orange.”

Pantanal fires
Pantanal fires June 2024

The repeated fires have left the environment in a state of constant recovery — and nearby communities are struggling.

“We were just trying to recover from the 2020 fire, which devastated our Pantanal. We had not fully recovered and now we are facing this again,” said a volunteer firefighter with the Baia Negra Environmental Protection Area’s Association of Women Producers.

A recent report from MapBiomas Brazil, a collaborative initiative including NGOs, universities, and technology companies, sheds light on a major cause of the fires: surface water loss.

Edge effects
Edge effects on the native vegetation and continuous habitat — including exposure to wind and solar radiation, susceptibility to fire, increased predation rates, and

The Pantanal is the biome in Brazil that has dried up the most between 1985 and 2023. The report said annual water surface for the area last year was just under 944,000 acres — only 2 percent of the wetland biome was covered by water. The total is reportedly 61 percent under the historical average. The area was 50 percent drier in 2023 than it was in 2018 when the area’s last major flood happened.

“In 2024, we didn’t have a flood peak,” said Eduardo Rosa with  MapBiomas. “The year has seen a peak drought, which should last until September. The Pantanal in extreme drought is already facing fires that are difficult to control.”

The report also found that the entire Amazon region suffered a severe drought with a decrease of 8.2 million acres of water surface.

Up to 25% of Brazil’s native vegetation may be degraded

A new platform from the MapBiomas network shows that between 1986 and 2021 Brazil had between 11 and 25 percent of its native vegetation susceptible to degradation. This corresponds to an area ranging from 60.3 million hectares to 135 million hectares.

Fire effects over time
Visualized fire effects over 7 years, resulting from a single burn or multiple burns.

About 64 percent of Brazil — more than half the country — is covered by native vegetation. The beta version of MapBiomas’ degradation vectors platform makes it possible to generate unprecedented scenarios of the impact of factors that can cause degradation on native vegetation across  Brazil.

“This is the first time that degradation can be assessed in a broader way and in all Brazilian biomes,” says Tasso Azevedo, general coordinator of MapBiomas. “But we know that this degradation process occurs in other types of cover, such as agriculture and pasture, as well as soils and water, where we also intend to advance with this information in MapBiomas in the coming years.”

  ➤ View the main highlights [PDF] of the Degradation module

The degradation vectors considered by the MapBiomas team in this first edition of the platform include the size and isolation of the native vegetation fragments, their edge areas, the frequency of fire and the time since the last burn, as well as the age of the secondary vegetation.

Pantanal: fire as a factor in degradation

In the Pantanal, the degraded area can vary from 800,000 hectares (6.8 percent) to 2.1 million hectares (almost 19 percent). Although it is a biome that coexists with fire, the incidence of fires in the last five years has meant that 9 percent of the Pantanal’s forest formations, which are fire-sensitive areas, have been damaged.

Eduardo Rosa with the MapBiomas’ Pantanal team says some of the vectors of degradation in the Pantanal beyond this analysis must consider the entire biome’s surroundings, since all the rivers that naturally irrigate the Pantanal plain are born in plateau areas. “The removal of native vegetation for agricultural and livestock expansion unprotects the soil and interferes with the distribution of water and sediment. The quantity and quality of water that reaches the plains also depends on dams and hydroelectric plants that alter the natural flow of water,” he says. “Climate issues relating to rainfall and temperature regulate droughts and floods, and the increase in periods of drought has hampered the resilience of the Pantanal ecosystem.”

 

 

Embraer tests the C-390 with a MAFFS II retardant delivery system

Embraer C-390 equipped with MAFFS II
Embraer C-390 equipped with a MAFFS II. Embraer photo.

Embraer has successfully completed the flight test certification campaign for the Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System (MAFFS II), which provides the C-390 Millennium with the ability to drop water or retardant on wildfires. The tests were carried out at the Embraer facility in Gavião Peixoto, São Paulo State, in Brazil. After full certification, the firefighting capability will be available to the aircraft’s operators.

The MAFFS II can discharge up to 3,000 gallons. It is designed to interface with the aircraft’s Cargo Handling System and requires only aircraft power to operate. The conclusion of these tests, which included several in-flight water drops, proved the system’s ability to integrate with the aircraft, and demonstrated suitable aspects of flight quality and maneuverability at low speeds.

When the first C-390 or KC-390 rolled out of the factory in 2014 and had not yet completed its first flight, Embraer was comparing it to the American-built C-130, saying it would be multi-role, including serving as an air tanker. Their web site included an artist’s conception of the aircraft outfitted with a first generation MAFFS, with two nozzles exiting through the open rear cargo ramp. The MAFFS II pumps the water or retardant out the troop door on the left side, as seen in the recent photos from Embraer.

KC-390 air tanker
Embraer had this image on their website in 2014, showing an artists conception of the new KC-390 dropping on a wildfire. It is now known as the C-390.

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Tom.

Smoke from wildfires turns day into night in Sao Paulo, Brazil

fires wildfires Brazil Bolivia
Map showing heat (the red dots) and smoke in Bolivia and Brazil detected by a satellite August 14, 2019. Click to enlarge.

Smoke from hundreds of fires in the Amazon Basin combined with clouds Monday afternoon to plunge a major South American city into darkness.

Numerous fires in Bolivia and the Amazon Basin in Brazil have been creating smoke in recent days that got pushed hundreds of miles by a cold front to Sao Paulo, turning the sky dark.

Below is an excerpt from an article in the Washington Post:

“The smoke [Monday] didn’t come from fires in the state of Sao Paulo, but from very dense and wide fires that have been happening for several days in [the state of] Rondonia and Bolivia,” Josélia Pegorim, a meteorologist with Climatempo, said in an interview with Globo. “The cold front changed direction and its winds transported the smoke to Sao Paulo.”

The news highlighted the number of forest fires in Brazil, which rose by more than 80 percent this year, according to data released this week by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE).

“This central Brazil and south of the Amazon Rainforest region has been undergoing a prolonged drought,” Alberto Setzer, a researcher at INPE, said in an interview with local media outlets. “And there are some places where there has not fallen a drop of rain for three months.”

Most of the Amazon was once considered fireproof, but as climate change and deforestation remake the world, wildfires are increasing in frequency and intensity, recent research has shown.

In the Amazon region, according to NASA, fires are rare for much of the year because wet weather prevents them from starting and spreading. However, in July and August, activity typically increases due to the arrival of the dry season. Many people use fire to maintain farmland and pastures or to clear land for other purposes. Typically, activity peaks in early September and mostly stops by November.

The map above, showing heat and smoke in Brazil and Bolivia on August 14, is the best we could find. More recent satellite imagery has either clouds, or smoke so dense over very large areas that smoke from individual fires couldn’t be distinguished from smoke covering very large areas.

Sky lantern sets fire to Olympic venue in Rio

The track and roof of the velodrome used in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro were damaged after a sky lantern landed on the facility. Much of the roof was heavily damaged and photos from TV network Globo showed a 20 to 30 meter section of the track had burned. Wood from Siberia was used to construct the track surface which made it one of the last venues in the Rio Olympics to be ready.

Sky lanterns, also known as Chinese lanterns, are plastic or paper bags lofted by the heat created by burning fuel at the bottom. After they are launched the perpetrator has no control and the dangerous devices are carried wherever the wind blows. Too often they get caught on trees, roofs, cell phone towers, or land on the ground when the flames are still active and start damaging fires. They are banned in most U.S. states and many countries, including Brazil.

Some areas enact specific laws or regulations prohibiting sky lanterns, but they are banned in any state or city that adopts the 2015 edition of the International Fire Code.

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Andrew.
Typos or errors, report them HERE.

Wildfire burns near two Olympic venues in Brazil

A wildfire burned close to several Olympic venues in Rio de Janeiro on Monday.

Below is an excerpt from an article in the Brisbane Times:

A forest fire on Monday placed the Olympic mountain biking venue in jeopardy, but games organisers insist the threat has passed.

Spectators arrived at the Olympic hockey centre late on Monday afternoon to find smoke and ash blowing over the venue ahead of the women’s quarter-final between Great Britain and Spain.

The conditions were a result of a fire which a Rio 2016 spokeswoman said started about 4pm near the Deodoro sports complex, home of the equestrian, rugby sevens, shooting, BMX, mountain biking, canoeing, kayaking, women’s basketball and modern pentathlon at these Games.

The spokeswoman said that the fire became more aggressive, placing the mountain bike centre in danger less than a week before it hosts the cross-country races of this year’s calendar.

But according to the spokeswoman, a change of wind direction moved the fire out of harm’s way. She said there had been no injuries as a result of the fire, with firefighters continuing in their attempts to extinguish it as of late on Monday night.

Another fire last week was near the rugby sevens venue.

Erickson Air-Crane intends to purchase company with 14 helicopters in Brazil

Sky crane helicopter at heli-well
Air-Crane helicopter on the Los Conchas fire in New Mexico drafting water out of heli-well at Los Alamos National Laboratory, June, 2011. Photo: Los Alamos National Laboratory

Revised November 8, 2012

Erickson Air-Crane, a company in Portland, Oregon, that builds, operates, and sells Erickson S-64 heavy-lift helicopters, intends to purchase Air Amazonia, a subsidiary of HRT Participacoes, a company in Brazil, along with their 14 helicopters.

Erickson’s Air-Cranes are used extensively in fighting wildland fires. At least 15 Air-Cranes or Ch-54 helicopters were on contract with the U.S. Forest Service in 2012. The company has been sending some of the ships to Australia since 1998 to fight fires there during the down-under summer, which of course is winter in the United States. During the 2011-2012 summer there, Erickson had three of them in Australia — aircraft named Elvis, Elsie, and Marty.

The Mail Tribune has some details about the transaction:

“It plays well to our unique capabilities,”Udo Rieder [Erickson’s president and chief executive officer] said during a conference call with analysts on Wednesday.

He said the deal for 14 medium and light helicopters will significantly increase Erickson’s capability in South American markets, adding revenue and making good use of the company’s capital.

“It will reduce the impact of the seasonality of our business and expand our footprint in the gas and oil industry,” Rieder said.

HRT owns seven Sikorsky-61 aircraft, which are smaller but have many similarities to Erickson’s current fleet.

“We’ve always talked about adding medium-lift capability to our operation,” Rieder said. “It’s complementary to our business. The S-61s are little sisters to the air-cranes. Many of the parts are similar and some are identical — the cockpits are the same. This would give us quite a bit more capability at our Central Point facility. This will provide a platform to bring in S-64s and exchange equipment fairly quickly in Brazil and Peru.”

He said the company is unsure of what it will do with the Bell 212s and Eurocopter AS-350s that are part of the deal.

“We have the option to move them anywhere we want near-term,” he said. “We’ll wait and see what the demand is, but we’ll pretty much absorb all the aircraft there.”

The deal, however, isn’t expected to close until the second half of 2013, Rieder said, because of “fairly complex regulatory requirements and licensing matters.”

Below is a portion of the text from an announcement by Erickson:

===============================================================

Erickson Air-Crane Inc. Announces Letter of Intent to Acquire Brazilian Oil and Gas Aerial Services Business

Plans Purchase of Air Logistics Business from HRT Participaes em Petroleo, S.A.

Early Stage Transaction Announcement, Closing Expected in Second Half 2013

14 Aircraft Fleet to Position Company as a Leading Air Services Provider in Brazil

PORTLAND, Ore. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — Nov. 6, 2012 — Erickson Air-Crane Incorporated (NASDAQ: EAC) (Erickson Air-Crane or the Company), a leading operator and the manufacturer of the powerful heavy-lift helicopter, the Erickson S-64 Aircrane, today announced that it had entered into a non-binding letter of intent to acquire 14 helicopters and associated personnel and assets from HRT Participacoes em Petroleo, S.A. (HRT).

The letter of intent is non-binding and, for the acquisition to be completed, requires that EAC provide operational services to HRT in the Amazon, including both cargo and passenger transport, through a three-year, renewable contract.

Udo Rieder, Chief Executive Officer of Erickson Air-Crane, commented, We are very pleased to have identified what we believe is a strong future partner. Were confident that this acquisition can be an excellent path to diversification and growth. Brazil is one of the most dynamic and fastest growing industrial markets in the world and we are uniquely suited to provide our expertise and leverage the full capabilities of this fleet and our investment.

About Erickson Air-Crane Incorporated

Erickson Air-Crane specializes in the operation and manufacture of the Erickson S-64 Aircrane (the Aircrane), a versatile and powerful heavy-lift helicopter. The Aircrane has a lift capacity of up to 25,000 pounds and is the only commercial aircraft built specifically as a flying crane without a fuselage for internal loads. The Aircrane is also the only commercial heavy-lift helicopter with a rear load-facing cockpit, combining an unobstructed view and complete aircraft control for precision lift and load placement capabilities. Erickson Air-Crane owns and operates a fleet of 18 Aircranes, which are used to support a wide variety of government and commercial customers worldwide across a broad range of aerial services, including firefighting, timber harvesting, infrastructure construction, and crewing. Erickson Air-Crane also manufactures Aircranes and related components for sale to government and commercial customers and provides aftermarket support and maintenance, repair, and overhaul services for the Aircrane and other aircraft. Founded in 1971, Erickson Air-Crane is headquartered in Portland, Oregon with its principal manufacturing facility based in Central Point, Oregon. For more information, please visit http://www.ericksonaircrane.com.

 

Thanks go out to Joseph