# Fires Drive Long-Term Environmental Degradation in the Amazon Basin
These rapid land use and land cover changes in the Amazon have recently been associated with an increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, mainly due to deforestation [14], in addition to the consequence of land use change on soil quality [15], such as declining soil organic carbon (SOC) [16; 17]. In Brazil, the current political scenario has induced an intensification of these processes as a result of significant changes in laws, policies, and environmental regulations [18; 19]. In recent years, the frequency and intensity of fires have increased worldwide, especially during dry years. Globally, fires and deforestation are the main causes of biodiversity loss in the tropics [20; 21; 22], and the expectation is that without, a reduction in the present disturbance rates, undisturbed forests will have entirely disappeared in large tropical humid regions by 2050 [23]. In the Amazon, the use of fire is the fastest, most efficient, and least expensive way to clear a forested Amazonian agricultural frontier area and is often employed in protected areas, such as conservation units (CUs) and indigenous lands (ILs) [19; 24]. Ranchers, farmers, miners, and land grabbers all employ this practice. A recent study that determined different types of fires that occur in the Amazon showed that deforestation fires are fires in areas that have been previously cleared and can invade standing forests; their drivers and positive feedbacks can lead to more fires in the region [25]. Such fires lead to the release of a significant amount of GHGs into the atmosphere [26; 27; 28]. In the Amazon region, fires are ubiquitous at the end of the dry season (September-October; e.g., [PERSON] et al. [29]), but have often worsened in years of extreme drought (i.e., 2005, 2010, and 2015) [30; 31; 32; 33]. Anomalously dry years are associated with tropical seas surface temperature anomalies [34; 35; 36]; high temperatures and low humidity provide favorable conditions for the rapid spread of fires [37; 38]. These extreme-drought events have the potential to destabilize large areas by reducing rainfall and thereby increasing the risk of forest death [39], which could, in turn, lead to the further intensification of regional droughts as a result of vegetation loss [40]. A warmer and drier climate can lead to the mortality of plant species adapted to wetter climates [4], as well as a decrease in water recycling in the central part of the Amazon [41; 42]. Researchers forecast a possibility of doubling of the burned area south of the Brazilian Amazon in the coming decades [43]. This projection is in accordance with the scenarios proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which are based on global numerical models [44] that indicate increased environmental degradation in the near future. Indeed, the Amazon ecosystem has been identified as a region with the highest vulnerability index in ecosystem function, particularly in areas of large-scale forest degradation and fragmentation [45]. Recently, advances in remote sensing have made it possible to quantify and monitor environmental degradation [1; 14] caused by climate change [46], fires [47], changes in gross primary production (GPP) [48], and C supply [14]. Using the wide availability of products generated by remote orbital sensors, it is possible to study degradation in large areas, such as the Amazon Basin, over a relatively long span of time. However, some questions have yet to be answered about this region: is there a relationship between the duration of dry periods and fire foci extent? What is the impact of burning on C absorption and emissions? Can models/products generated from remote orbital sensors be used to estimate environmental degradation?