West and Central Africa Burnt Area Statistics (2018–Present)

Action Against Hunger ACF provides monthly and annual burnt area statistics in square kilometers for West and Central Africa from 2018 to the present. The data is derived from the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service v4 at 300m resolution and aggregated across four administrative levels. It serves as a monitoring tool for bushfire occurrences and environmental hazards in the Sahel region.

Use Cases

• Analyzing seasonal bushfire trends using the monthly burnt area statistics (sqkm) across different years
• Assessing regional environmental risk by comparing annual burnt area totals between Admin 1 and Admin 2 levels
• Evaluating agricultural and livestock vulnerability in the Sahel based on fire occurrence statistics

Strengths

• Aggregated across four administrative levels (Admin 0, 1, 2, and 3)
• Derived from Copernicus Land Monitoring Service v4 300m resolution imagery
• Standardized administrative boundaries provided by OCHA

Limitations

• 300m spatial resolution may not capture very small-scale or localized fire events
• The primary HDX distribution is in XLSX format, requiring external links for raw GeoTIFF or Shapefile access

Provenance

Source

Action Against Hunger ACF - Regional Office for West and Central Africa (ROWCA) via Copernicus Land Monitoring Service

Collection Method

Reprocessed satellite-derived Burnt Area (BA) products from the European Commission's Earth observation programme.

Time Range

2018-01-01 to 2026-03-13

Freshness

Updated through early 2026, maintaining a continuous record from 2018.

Geography

West and Central Africa (Sahel region)