Improving the spatial‐temporal analysis of Amazonian fires

There is a growing interest in Amazonian fires, accompanied by a substantial increase in research in the subject. Here, we list five common misunderstandings about Amazonian climate, vegetation, fires and the deforestation process to help to support future research. Amazonian fires have been of great scientific and political concern in recent years, as they indicate changes in environmental governance, altered environmental conditions, and lie at the interface of climate and land-use changes&mdashtwo of the dominant stressors in tropical environments (Barlow et al., 2018). Research on complex socio-environmental systems, such as the Amazon, is crucial to inform more effective decision making. With this in mind, we were concerned that recent papers&mdashincluding that of Xu et al. (2020) in this journal&mdashhave failed to contemplate critical nuances that underpin Amazonian fires, leading to flawed results. In the interest of supporting science that is more informative, we outline five key features of the Amazon that need to be considered when analyzing spatial-temporal patterns of fires.