CANBERRA, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Australia experienced its second-largest fire year in the past decade in 2025, driven by severe weather and storm-related ignitions, according to a new national fire mapping report.
The inaugural report found activity in 2025 followed expected seasonal and regional patterns, but severe late dry season conditions amplified fires in October, said a statement of Australia's Charles Darwin University (CDU) released Thursday.
The annual report, released by the North Australia and Rangelands Fire Information (NAFI) service at CDU, detailed fire activity across Australia, with NAFI's burnt-area mapping covering 80 percent of the country and capturing about 97 percent of national fire areas.
The Northern Territory (NT) recorded the largest burnt area at 29.6 million hectares in 2025, followed by the state of Western Australia with 19 million hectares and the state of Queensland with 14.3 million hectares, with most fires in October, the report showed.
Several "Terra" scale fires, each burning over 1 million hectares, were recorded, including a 3.5-million-hectare blaze in the NT's Tanami Desert sparked by dry lightning, which burned for 28 days in October and November.
Noting October as Australia's fire season, CDU Northern Institute Senior Research Fellow Rohan Fisher, who manages fire mapping for the Northern Territory, warned that recent "extensive and near unprecedented rainfall" across northern and central Australia has increased vegetation growth and raised fuel loads across much of the country.
Fisher noted that Indigenous-led fire management in northern savannas continues to reduce fire severity despite high overall fire frequency. ■
