Amazon fire detections using satellite data, August 2019. Satellite map of South America, showing the fire detections (yellow dots) made using the MODIS satellite sensors between 15 and 22 August 2019. The 2019 Brazil wildfires consist of tens of thousands of wildfires that have occurred in the Amazon rainforest during the tropical dry season. This number is higher than usual, thought to be due to government policies allowing increased use of slash-and-burn clearing of forested areas for agricultural purposes. This has implications for global climate change. Some Brazilian states have declared states of emergency in response to the fires. The data for this map was obtained by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) sensors that are carried on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites.