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Ribeira de Pena fire, September 2016 Alvão, Alvadia, União das Freguesias de Cerva e Limões

Out · last detection 7 Sept 2016, 13:54 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2016 in Alvão, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,869 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities. According to ICNF, the largest of the 5 recorded fires was detected on 6 September 2016 at 11:47 and declared extinguished on 7 September 2016.

It is the 3th largest in Vila Pouca de Aguiar since 2016 (of 10 with a page). Number 9 in Portugal in 2016, of 180.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Vila Pouca de Aguiar · 2024Vila Real · 2022Vila Real · 2025Murça · 2022

Burnt area
2,869ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
7days
1 Sept 2016 – 7 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit
4
freguesias
Started on
1 Sept
2016
Heat detections
218
in a single hotspot: 429 MW
Danger at start
24
High · FWI index
Average daily power
940MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept7 Sept
7 Sept 2016

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 2016 · 138 MW · 13 2 Sept 2016 · 291 MW · 37 3 Sept 2016 · 117 MW · 25 4 Sept 2016 · 18 MW · 2 6 Sept 2016 · 4,808 MW · 90 7 Sept 2016 · 265 MW · 51
1 Sept 2 Sept 3 Sept 4 Sept 6 Sept 7 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
49km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 23.2 mm on 13 Sept.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.8% of the area of London (29 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. Alvão 774 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started
    1,519 ha reached on 1 Sept
    29 %
  2. Alvadia 165 inhabitants · 0.5 km from the centre
    749 ha reached on 1 Sept
    22 %
  3. União das Freguesias de Cerva e Limões 2,285 inhabitants · 3.7 km from the centre
    336 ha reached on 2 Sept
    5.6 %
  4. Ribeira de Pena (Salvador) e Santo Aleixo de Além-Tâmega 2,609 inhabitants · 3.1 km from the centre
    267 ha reached on 6 Sept
    5.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official 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.

What burned

  • Other natural land59 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland21 %
  • Agricultural areas18 %
  • Mixed forest0.9 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %

Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

Official record

Complex of 5 fires according to ICNF

According to ICNF, 5 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 2,472 ha (the satellite measured 2,869 ha).

ICNF records each fire that started at a different time or place separately; the satellite sees a single burned area, so this page groups them together. The numbers on the map show where each one started.

When each one burned

1 11 ha 2 175 ha 3 422 ha 4 12 ha 5 1,853 ha
30 Aug7 Sept
arson negligence rekindling
  1. 1 Ribeira de Pena Santa Marinha 30 August 2016 · 09:45 11 ha · extinguished on 30 August 2016 · cause: arson
  2. 2 Vila Pouca de Aguiar Gouvães da Serra 1 September 2016 · 02:35 175 ha · extinguished on 1 September 2016 · cause: negligence
  3. 3 Ribeira de Pena Cerva 1 September 2016 · 22:06 422 ha · extinguished on 4 September 2016 · cause: negligence
  4. 4 Vila Pouca de Aguiar Gouvães da Serra 2 September 2016 · 16:12 12 ha · extinguished on 2 September 2016 · cause: rekindling
  5. 5 Ribeira de Pena Alvadia 6 September 2016 · 11:47 1,853 ha · extinguished on 7 September 2016 · cause: rekindling

Total according to ICNF: 2,472 ha, 86 % of the 2,869 ha in the satellite perimeter.

ICNF (Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas). This is the agency’s operational record: its figures may be revised when the year’s statistics are closed.

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)
1 Sept 28.2 °C 32 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
2 Sept 29.1 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
3 Sept 29.9 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
4 Sept 29.5 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Sept 30.4 °C 26 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Sept 32.4 °C 19 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Sept 28.1 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Sept after 22.4 °C 40 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
9 Sept after 23.1 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
10 Sept after 23.5 °C 44 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
11 Sept after 25.5 °C 40 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
12 Sept after 25.4 °C 38 % 49 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
13 Sept after 14.9 °C 62 % 53 km/h 23.2 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Aug 2016
After · 14 Sept 2016

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 7 September 2016 the air beside the fire reached 232 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 82: 5.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak232 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM10303 µg/m³
303112345678910
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 · 218Every 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 Portugal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ribeira de Pena fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 September 2016 to 7 September 2016 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2016 to 6 September 2016. According to ICNF, the largest of the 5 recorded fires was detected on 6 September 2016 at 11:47 and declared extinguished on 7 September 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,869 hectares (28.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Alvão (1,519 ha, 29 %); Alvadia (749 ha, 22 %); União das Freguesias de Cerva e Limões (336 ha, 5.6 %); Ribeira de Pena (Salvador) e Santo Aleixo de Além-Tâmega (267 ha, 5.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Alvão and reached its centre: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.4 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Portugal (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.

Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

Report an error
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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 September 2016 to 6 September 2016. 218 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 2,472 official ha against 2,869 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. 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 (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.