Are there lightning fires in the Brazilian Amazon?

Journal article

The Brazilian Amazon contains approximately 40% of the world’s tropical rainforest and plays a critical role in preserving biodiversity and regulating water, energy and carbon cycles. However, deforestation and increasingly frequent droughts, heatwaves and wildfires threaten these rainforests. Amazonian fires are generally assumed to be entirely anthropogenic, which has led to lightning-ignited fires being underexplored. Here, we present the first detailed assessment of the spatiotemporal patterns of lightning-ignited fires in the Amazon rainforest to elucidate the role of lightning and human ignitions in shaping Amazon fire dynamics. To do this, we matched cloud-to-ground lightning strokes from the Global Lightning Dataset (GLD360) with individual fire events between 2019 and 2024 to obtain a probability of lightning ignition for each fire. We also calculated a human-ignition probability index using proximity to roads, waterways, and human land cover as proxies for human activity. By combining both probabilistic indices with ground-observed lightning ignitions from eight protected areas, we could optimize the threshold that determines if an ignition is more likely to be caused by lightning or human activities. We estimate that in the Brazilian Amazon, lightning caused on average 0.2%–0.4% of all fires each year (234–407 ignitions per year) and 1.1%–1.2% of the annually burned area (1226–1358 km2 per year) between 2019 and 2024. More than 89% of these fires occurred in the late dry season between August and November, peaking in September and October. Despite lightning-ignited fires contributing a small proportion of all Amazonian fires, they constitute over 25% of the fires in identified grid clusters in parts of the states of Pará (particularly in the Breves region), Amazonas, and Rondônia. This study provides the first estimation of the role of natural ignitions in Amazon fire dynamics and a scientific basis for understanding their contribution within the region.

Authors: Zhang, C; Janssen, TAJ; Moris, JV; Andela, N; Jones, MW

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: IOP Publishing
• Journal: Environmental Research Letters
• Volume: 21
• Issue: 2
• Article number: 024025
• Publication date: 2026-01-27
• Acceptance date: 2026-01-13
• DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ae3786
• EISSN: 1748-9326
• ISSN: 1748-9326
• Language: English
• Keywords: fire regime; natural ignition; anthropogenic fires; lightning-ignited fires; Amazon rainforest