Wildfire near Barreira da Cruz (Aug 17)
True color
Fire (SWIR)
Infrared / SWIR (right): sees through smoke.
🟢 green = vegetation
🟤 red/brown = burned
🟠 orange = active fire
Imagery: Sentinel-2 (Copernicus). Drag to compare smoke vs. infrared.
Heat detections: NASA FIRMS (last 48h).
An intense heat signature is currently being detected from an active wildfire burning near Barreira da Cruz, Brazil, covering 930 hectares (2,298 acres). Satellites have picked up 37 heat detections in the past 48 hours, illustrating the local spread of the fire front since it started on August 17, 2026.
This incident unfolds during the region's typical fire season, which runs from August to October. The broader landscape reflects a notably slower year for fire activity across the country, with 3,040,278 hectares burned so far in 2026, marking a 90% decrease compared to the two-decade average.
In context
This wildfire burned in Brazil for 2 days. In total it burned about 930 ha (2,298 acres) — around 9.3 km².
Close to the tropics, fires tend to follow the dry season and are often linked to land-clearing rather than a single summer peak.
The bigger picture in Brazil
Across Brazil, roughly 5,066,892 hectares have burned so far in 2026 — 84% below the two-decade average. Data from Copernicus GWIS.
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