Africa is, by a wide margin, the most wildfire-prone region on Earth. The continent accounts for roughly 70% of all land burned by fire globally each year and about half of all fire-related carbon emissions. After Africa, the Amazon basin, Australia, Siberia, and the Mediterranean coast of Europe round out the world’s most fire-active regions. Fires in these areas collectively dwarf even the worst wildfire seasons in places like the western United States.
Sub-Saharan Africa: The Fire Continent
No other region comes close to Africa’s fire activity. The vast savannas stretching across sub-Saharan Africa burn on a massive, cyclical scale every year, driven by a combination of dry seasons, grassland ecology, and widespread agricultural burning. Farmers and herders use fire to clear land, manage grazing areas, and prepare soil for planting. These fires sweep across enormous stretches of landscape during the dry months, particularly in countries along the Sahel belt and in southern and central Africa.
Much of this burning happens in savanna ecosystems that have evolved alongside fire for millions of years. Grasses dry out quickly, ignite easily, and regrow rapidly after burning. Many native trees and shrubs in these regions are fire-adapted, capable of resprouting after being burned to the ground. This cycle of burning and regrowth is a natural part of how these ecosystems function, though the sheer scale of human-set fires has increased the total area burned well beyond what lightning alone would cause.
The Amazon Basin
The Amazon rainforest is one of the densest concentrations of fire activity on Earth, and nearly all of it is tied to human activity. Deforestation and fire are tightly linked in the Brazilian Amazon: farmers and ranchers clear forest by cutting trees, letting them dry, and setting them ablaze. For over a decade, annual deforestation rates tracked closely with fire counts in the region.
Drought makes the problem significantly worse. Even as Brazil reduced its deforestation rate by 76% between 2003 and 2015, fire incidence actually rose 36% during the severe 2015 drought compared to the previous 12 years. During drought years, fires escape from cleared land into standing forest that would normally be too wet to burn. The 2010 drought pushed fire-related carbon emissions to 1.7 times their normal level. Major droughts in the Amazon, like those in 2005, 2010, and 2015, are linked to shifts in ocean temperatures that reduce rainfall across the basin, creating conditions where fire spreads easily through degraded and fragmented forest.
Beyond deforestation, slash-and-burn agriculture and regular pasture clearing with fire keep the Amazon’s fire counts high even in years when new forest clearing slows. As climate patterns shift, drought-driven fires are increasingly offsetting the gains made by reducing deforestation.
Australia’s Fire-Adapted Landscape
Australia’s fire season burns vast areas of savanna, grassland, and bushland across the northern and interior regions every year. The tropical savannas of northern Australia experience regular, large-scale fires during the dry season from roughly April through November. These fires are often enormous in area but receive less international attention than the bushfires that periodically devastate forests in the southeast.
Much of Australia’s vegetation is not just fire-tolerant but fire-dependent. Eucalyptus trees, which dominate Australian forests, contain oils that make them highly flammable. Some species require fire to open their seed pods. This relationship between fire and ecology means Australia has burned regularly for tens of thousands of years, with Indigenous Australians historically using controlled burns to manage the landscape. The catastrophic 2019-2020 bushfire season, which burned over 18 million hectares, demonstrated what happens when drought, extreme heat, and high fuel loads converge in this already fire-prone environment.
Siberia and the Boreal North
Siberia consistently shows up as one of the densest fire zones on global satellite maps. Russia’s vast boreal forests, stretching across millions of square kilometers of remote territory, burn extensively each summer. Lightning strikes are a major natural ignition source in these sparsely populated areas, and fires can burn for weeks or months across landscapes with little to no firefighting infrastructure.
What makes Siberian fires particularly concerning is the carbon stored in boreal soils. These forests sit atop thick layers of organic material and, in many areas, permafrost. When fires burn hot enough to ignite the soil layer itself, they release carbon that has been locked underground for centuries. Warming temperatures are lengthening the fire season in Siberia and drying out landscapes that historically stayed too wet to burn, pushing fire activity further north into areas that rarely experienced it before.
Mediterranean Europe
Southern Europe is the most fire-affected part of the continent, with an average of about 45,000 fires per year across the Mediterranean region. Five countries bear the heaviest burden: Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and Greece, along with major islands like Corsica, Sicily, and Sardinia.
Fire risk is not uniform across the region. The northwest Iberian Peninsula (particularly Portugal and northwestern Spain) and southern Italy face the highest fire likelihood, while northern France and northeastern Italy see far less activity. Hot, dry summers combined with rugged terrain and dense shrubland vegetation called maquis create ideal conditions for fire spread. Rural depopulation has also played a role: as people leave the countryside, previously managed land fills in with dense vegetation that acts as fuel.
Portugal stands out as an extreme case within Europe. The country has experienced several devastating fire seasons, with fires fueled by eucalyptus plantations (introduced for the paper industry) that burn with exceptional intensity. Greece has also seen catastrophic fire years, particularly when summer heatwaves combine with strong winds.
Why Most Wildfires Are Human-Caused
Globally, the vast majority of wildfires are started by people rather than natural causes like lightning. In the United States, data covering 2000 through 2017 shows that nearly 85% of wildland fires were human-caused. The ratio varies by region, with lightning playing a larger role in remote areas like Siberia and the interior American West, while human ignition dominates in populated areas across Africa, South America, and Southern Europe.
Human-caused fires include deliberate agricultural burning, accidental ignitions from equipment or campfires, arson, and fires that escape from controlled burns. In tropical regions, the connection between fire and land use is especially direct: fire is the primary tool for converting forest to farmland and for maintaining pastures. In fire-adapted savannas, human burning amplifies a process that would occur naturally on a smaller scale. The key difference is timing and frequency. People set fires year after year in the same areas, sometimes burning landscapes more often than they would naturally recover.
Fire-Prone Ecosystems vs. Fire-Vulnerable Ones
Not all wildfire-prone regions experience fire the same way. In savannas, grasslands, and open woodlands, fire is a regular ecological event that most native species can survive. Grasses regrow within weeks. Fire-adapted trees resprout from their roots or protected buds. Some plants only release seeds after exposure to fire or smoke. These ecosystems, found across Africa, Australia, and the pine savannas of the southeastern United States, contain what ecologists call pyrophytic species: plants that thrive in the presence of recurring fire.
Tropical rainforests, by contrast, are fire-vulnerable. Trees in the Amazon or Southeast Asian rainforests did not evolve with regular fire. When fire enters these systems, through drought, logging, or deliberate clearing, it causes lasting damage. Trees die, canopy cover is lost, and the exposed forest floor dries out further, making repeat burns more likely. This creates a feedback loop where each fire makes the next one easier to start and harder to stop. The distinction matters because fire in a savanna is part of a functioning ecosystem, while fire in a rainforest is a sign that something has gone wrong.