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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallWildfire activity declined on average in one global analysis of the first half of 2020, but the change was far from uniform: some regions recorded fewer fires while others recorded more. A 2025 conference abstract by Zhang and Wang estimated an 11.8% drop in global fire incidence compared with the 2016–2019 average. That estimate does not mean every place burned less, nor does it show that fires in regions with increases were naturally ignited or happened without human influence.
Did COVID-19 lockdowns reduce wildfires globally?
One global analysis says fire incidence fell on average during the first half of 2020 lockdowns. Zhang and Wang reported an 11.8% reduction compared with the average for the same period in 2016–2019 in an abstract presented at the EGU General Assembly in 2025. It is a conference-abstract finding, not a peer-reviewed consensus estimate.
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The abstract also reports substantial variation between countries: changes ranged from a 6.3-fold increase to a 5.6-fold decrease. A global average can therefore fall even while fires increase in particular places. The analysis covers the first half of 2020 and its stated comparison period; it should not be read as a result for every country, the whole pandemic, or all measures of fire activity.
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Why do studies report different fire outcomes?
“Fire activity” is not one interchangeable measurement. Satellite active-fire detections indicate fires observed at the time of a satellite pass; incident counts record reported fire events; fire radiative power estimates the energy emitted by detected fires; burned area measures land affected over a period. Fire intensity is another characteristic, not a synonym for any of these measures. Studies can reach different conclusions because they examine different places, time windows, baselines, outcomes, weather conditions, and research designs.
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The regional studies below illustrate that variation. Their percentages use different measures and reference points, so they should not be ranked as if they were estimates of the same effect.
| Place and study | Reported finding | What the comparison means |
|---|---|---|
| Southeastern United States; Poulter et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021) | 21% less fire activity from March to December 2020 than the 2003–2019 average; reductions reached 41% on federal lands relative to the past 20 years. | The researchers used satellite active-fire observations and prescribed-fire management statistics. Unusually wet February conditions contributed in part, alongside pandemic-related changes in ignition and postponed or canceled prescribed burns. |
| Colombia; Amador-Jiménez et al., Environmental and Resource Economics (2020) | Forest fires increased in the study’s comparison of observed outcomes with three counterfactuals. | The study found an association with lockdown, not a settled explanation of why fire rates changed. It reported regional correlations with armed-group presence and discussed reduced monitoring as a possible mechanism. |
| Madagascar protected areas; Eklund et al., Nature Sustainability (2022) | There were 76–248% more fires than the study’s climate- and biome-based predictions during March–July 2020. | Excess fires coincided with a pause in on-site protected-area management, including patrols and community activities. Most were concentrated in western protected areas; seasonality also helped explain where anomalies appeared. |
| Nepal; Sharma et al., World Development (2021) | For each additional reported COVID-19 case, the study estimated 4.54% fewer forest-fire incidents and 11.36% lower fire radiative power. | These are study-specific estimates based on variation in reported cases and human-induced forest-fire outcomes. They are not directly comparable with the global lockdown-period percentage. |
How could fewer people mean fewer fires in some places?
People affect fire activity through both ignition and management. Changes in travel and routine can reduce some accidental or deliberate ignitions. Lockdown can also alter land clearing, agricultural burning, access to forests, monitoring, enforcement, and prescribed-fire programs. Those changes do not all push fire activity in the same direction: fewer ignitions may mean fewer fires, while less monitoring or a pause in management can make fires more likely to start or spread unchecked.
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Weather and local conditions matter too. Rainfall, temperature, vegetation, and the timing of a region’s fire season affect whether an ignition becomes a fire and how it behaves. The southeastern U.S. study identified unusually wet February conditions as a partial factor in its decline. The Madagascar analysis adjusted predictions for climate and biome, but its excess-fire estimate does not establish the ignition source of every fire.
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Did some fires increase without human intervention?
The evidence does not support treating fires in lockdown-era increases as wholly independent of people. In Madagascar, fires above the model’s climate-adjusted prediction occurred while on-site protected-area management was curtailed, and excess fires returned to modeled levels after management resumed. That pattern supports the importance of management, but it does not prove that every excess fire was naturally ignited or that management changes alone caused the increase.
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In Colombia, researchers found an association between lockdown and increased forest fires, but said their econometric analysis could not resolve how or why lockdown changed fire rates. The finding is a reason to consider changes in monitoring and other human activity, not proof of one mechanism. More broadly, people can influence fires by starting them, preventing them, managing fuels, or responding to them; “less human activity” is not equivalent to “no human influence.”
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Do the lockdown findings explain the long-term decline in burned area?
No. A separate global study by Andela et al. in Science (2017) estimated a 24.3 ± 8.8% decline in global burned area over 18 years and identified agricultural expansion and intensification as primary drivers. That multiyear trend predates COVID-19 and measures burned area, not the short-term incidence estimate from the 2020 lockdown period.
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A separate 2025 study of global wildfire hotspots from 2020–2022 described observed declines as likely associated with reduced human ignitions and weather anomalies, while also noting intensified burning in some boreal and temperate regions. Its hotspot period and outcome differ from Zhang and Wang’s first-half-of-2020 global incidence analysis, so the two should not be combined into a single estimate.
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How to read claims about lockdowns and fires
- Check the geography and dates: a regional result or a first-half-of-2020 estimate does not describe every place or the entire pandemic.
- Check the outcome: active-fire detections, incident counts, fire radiative power, intensity, and burned area answer different questions.
- Check the baseline and method: historical averages, climate-adjusted predictions, and counterfactual comparisons are not equivalent.
- Separate association from cause: observed changes may coincide with lockdowns without identifying which changes in ignition, management, weather, or land use produced them.
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