Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Mpumalanga
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 23,269 fire detections seen from space; 17,730 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2023, 36,939.
Two readings from space. Fire detections are hot spots a VIIRS satellite saw as it passed, each about 375 m across, counted where they fall in the place: a big fire gives many, a short one between passes none. Burnt area is the ground that looks burnt afterwards, from Sentinel-3 at 300 m, in hectares. Neither is a fire report from the ground.
The last twelve months
- 23,269Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 17,730 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 298 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 348 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 348 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 710 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 263 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 204 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 943 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 2,150 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 6,257 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 4,748 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 3,312 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 3,688 fire detections |
| November 2025 | 154 ha burnt (0.002% of the place) |
| December 2025 | 48 ha burnt (0.001% of the place) |
| January 2026 | 453 ha burnt (0.006% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 1,841 ha burnt (0.024% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 3,757 ha burnt (0.049% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 2,669 ha burnt (0.035% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 8,808 ha burnt (0.12% of the place) |
| June 2026 | not out yet |
| July 2026 | not out yet |
| August 2026 | not out yet |
| September 2026 | not out yet |
| October 2026 | not out yet |
| Month | Detections | Nominal or high confidence | NOAA-20 (second reading) | Burnt | Share of the place | Land seen |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 2026 | 3,688 | 3,346 | 3,843 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 3,312 | 3,135 | 3,290 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 4,748 | 4,466 | 5,500 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 6,257 | 6,023 | 8,250 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 2,150 | 2,109 | 2,298 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 943 | 907 | 969 | 8,808 ha | 0.12% | 99% |
| April 2026 | 204 | 200 | 260 | 2,669 ha | 0.035% | 99% |
| March 2026 | 263 | 241 | 367 | 3,757 ha | 0.049% | 99% |
| February 2026 | 710 | 635 | 626 | 1,841 ha | 0.024% | 99% |
| January 2026 | 348 | 309 | 403 | 453 ha | 0.006% | 99% |
| December 2025 | 348 | 304 | 324 | 48 ha | 0.001% | 99% |
| November 2025 | 298 | 266 | 382 | 154 ha | 0.002% | 99% |
NOAA-20 carries the same instrument as S-NPP and passes about 50 minutes apart, so its count is a second reading of the same fires, not extra fires. “Land seen” is the share of the place’s land the burnt-area product saw often enough that month to tell.
The worst years
- 202336,939 fire detections, most in August 2023; 542,337 ha burnt
- 202436,833 fire detections, most in July 2024; 687,460 ha burnt
- 201436,582 fire detections, most in September 2014
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 687,460 ha (9.0% of the place); 2023, 542,337 ha (7.1% of the place); 2021, 509,552 ha (6.7% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 22,623 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 24,885 | 399,372 ha | 5.2% |
| 2024 | 36,833 | 687,460 ha | 9.0% |
| 2023 | 36,939 | 542,337 ha | 7.1% |
| 2022 | 23,220 | 316,646 ha | 4.1% |
| 2021 | 34,781 | 509,552 ha | 6.7% |
| 2020 | 29,143 | 393,023 ha | 5.1% |
| 2019 | 34,686 | 454,190 ha | 5.9% |
| 2018 | 29,107 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 27,354 | · | · |
| 2016 | 21,931 | · | · |
| 2015 | 27,895 | · | · |
| 2014 | 36,582 | · | · |
| 2013 | 33,628 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 29,706 | · | · |
Detections from February 2012 (S-NPP); burnt area from July 2018, so whole years of it from 2019. A larger place’s figures are the sums of its 2026 wards.
Source
Seen from space by American and European satellites: not fires reported on the ground.
How we worked this out
What we changed: we counted FIRMS’s detections (presumed vegetation fires only) by the 2026 ward their position falls in, and summed CLMS’s burned fraction times each pixel’s area over each ward; municipalities, districts and provinces are the sums of their wards.
Fire detections: we acknowledge the use of data and/or imagery from NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), part of NASA’s LANCE (VIIRS 375 m, S-NPP and NOAA-20). Burnt area: generated using European Union’s Copernicus Land Monitoring Service information (Burnt Area 300 m version 4, DOI 10.2909/8fa58061-28ab-49bb-9b77-c26b50733e34), modified; this does not mean the European Union endorses us.
Dataset: burnt area and fire, release of 12 November 2026.