The wildfires that have been devastating the Amazon rainforest have been international headline news over the last weeks. These fires are not only an environmental tragedy in terms of lost forest and biodiversity, but they are also leaving their mark on the atmosphere, affecting air quality and, potentially, the global climate.

Tracking spatio-temporal variations in flooded areas of wetlands is not an easy task, especially when they are characterised by a dense cover of emergent vegetation. Researchers in France developed a tool to monitor water in seasonal wetlands using Copernicus Sentinel-2 data, which exceed the performance of existing water indices.

Due to two scheduled special operations on the Copernicus Sentinel-3 SLSTR instruments, SLSTR mission data will be available but IR channels will be degraded during the duration of the maintenance activity.

Thousands of fires have broken out in the Amazon rainforest. Satellite data show that there are almost four times as many fires this year compared to the same period last year. Apart from Brazil, parts of Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina have also been affected.