Burning of Woody Debris Drives Fire Emissions in the Amazon and Cerrado

Satellite observations reveal how wildfires affect the carbon cycle

A groundbreaking study has revealed that fire emissions in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes are dominated by the smouldering combustion of woody debris. This critical finding, published today in Nature Geoscience, highlights the significant role of fuel characteristics in shaping fire emissions and their impact on global carbon cycles, air quality, and biodiversity.

This study represents the central results of the international Sense4Fire project (https://sense4fire.eu/) led by the Dresden University of Technology (TUD) in collaboration with the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), BeZero Ltd., and several international collaborators, with funding support from the European Space Agency (ESA).

The study addresses key uncertainties in fire emission inventories by combining advanced Earth Observation (EO) techniques with innovative modelling. Using satellite data and fire models, researchers have analysed data from the intense 2020 fire season in the Amazon and Cerrado regions in South America, integrating detailed observations on fuel types, moisture conditions, and burning behaviour. Their findings reveal that woody debris accounts for up to 75% of the total burnt live and dead biomass in these biomes, driving disproportionately high emissions of carbon monoxide and other pollutants. The study estimates that the wildfires in 2020 in the Amazon burnt around 372 million tons of dry matter, which caused emissions of carbon monoxide of around 40 million tons.

“We’ve demonstrated how the burning of dead wood, especially in tropical forest areas , results in smouldering combustion that produces significantly more carbon monoxide than fires in savannah ecosystems,” says Prof. Matthias Forkel, lead author of the study. “This understanding is crucial for improving fire emission inventories and global climate models.”

The study also leverages observations from the Sentinel-5p satellite analysed by KNMI to validate and refine emission estimates, highlighting the benefits of integrating bottom-up and top-down approaches. The results underscore the critical role of woody debris in amplifying emissions, especially in fire-prone regions like the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savannahs, where deforestation and human-induced fires are on the rise.

“This project showcases the power of collaborative science,” adds Dr. Jos de Laat from KNMI. “By combining cutting-edge satellite technologies, innovative modelling, and cross-institutional expertise, we’ve tackled one of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time.”

This project included the analysis and processing of hundreds of terabytes of datasets from satellite observations, which was enabled by using TUD’s high performance computing centre. The data is publicly available at TUD’s OPARA data repository (https://doi.org/10.25532/OPARA-688).

The presented findings have broad implications for managing fire emissions, addressing climate change, and protecting biodiversity. The involved researchers emphasize the need for targeted efforts to reduce fire activity through improved land management and policies  mitigating deforestation and landscape fragmentation.

This study serves as a call to action for stakeholders, policymakers, and scientists worldwide to reduce deforestation of tropical forests, thereby minimizing fire emissions and their impact on human health, ecosystems, and the global climate system.

Animation "Vegetation Fire Dynamics from Space"

Original publication:
Forkel, M., Wessollek, C., Huijnen, V., Andela, N., de Laat, J., Kinalczyk, D., Marrs, C., van Wees, D., Bastos, A., Ciais, P., Fawcett, D., Kaiser, J.W., Klauberg, C., Kutchartt, E., Leite, R.V., Li, W., Silva, C.A., Sitch, S., Goncalves De Souza, J., Zaehle, S., Plummer, S., 2025. Burning of woody debris dominates fire emissions in the Amazon and Cerrado. Nature Geoscience https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01637-5

For media inquiries, please contact:
Prof. Dr. Matthias Forkel,