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ML · Mali · –

Koundian fire, 12 November 2025 Baye, Koundian

Out · last detection 23 Nov 2025, 14:15 UTC

The fire started on 12 November 2025 in Koundian, Mali, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,387 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 183 in Mali in 2025, of 252.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

The power measured by the satellite is low (22.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
2,387ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
12 Nov 2025 – 22 Nov 2025
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
12 Nov
2025
Heat detections
47
in a single hotspot: 23 MW
Danger at start
21
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
49MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Nov22 Nov
23 Nov 2025

How it evolved, day by day

12 Nov 2025 · 58 MW · 7 13 Nov 2025 · 7 MW · 2 14 Nov 2025 · 29 MW · 5 15 Nov 2025 · 44 MW · 5 17 Nov 2025 · 60 MW · 10 18 Nov 2025 · 111 MW · 9 22 Nov 2025 · 4 MW · 1 23 Nov 2025 · 81 MW · 8
12 Nov 14 Nov 18 Nov

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

37°high
31km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 277 ha in 2017, 5 ha in 2021, 438 ha in 2023, 221 ha in 2024.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (24 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. 1,380 ha reached on 14 Nov
    1.1 %
  2. Koundian where it started
    1,022 ha reached on 12 Nov
    0.5 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
12 Nov 35.1 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
13 Nov 34.5 °C 35 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
14 Nov 35.6 °C 34 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
15 Nov 36.7 °C 30 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
16 Nov 37.0 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Nov 36.3 °C 22 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Nov 35.4 °C 26 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Nov 35.3 °C 33 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Nov 36.0 °C 26 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Nov 34.6 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Nov 36.8 °C 25 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Nov after 35.0 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Nov after 34.7 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
25 Nov after 32.8 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Nov after 33.2 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
27 Nov after 34.8 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Nov after 35.2 °C 20 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Nov after 35.7 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Nov after 35.0 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Dec after 34.6 °C 24 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
2 Dec after 31.6 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 5 Nov 2025
After · 29 Nov 2025

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 17 November 2025 the air beside the fire reached 51 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak51 µg/m³
Days over the guideline12 days
PM10116 µg/m³
Optical depth0.48
10 Nov13 Nov16 Nov19 Nov
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 47Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Mali

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Koundian fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 November 2025 to 22 November 2025 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 November 2025 to 18 November 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,387 hectares (23.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Baye (1,380 ha, 1.1 %); Koundian (1,022 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mali (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 18 November 2025 → 22 November 2025.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 12 November 2025 to 18 November 2025. 47 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.