Data science applied to environmental sciences

In recent years, immense amounts of data have been generated, from sensors to purchase transaction records, mobile GPS signals, digital satellite images, and social media. The raise of data collection has brought the need for quantitative minded professionals able to transform that data into information and decision making. In this opinion piece, we will share some of our views and experiences about the general role that data science plays nowadays, with a special interest in the field of environmetrics. We will include a limited number of examples that highlight the usefulness of data science in environmetrics, and a specific illustration of the behavior of the wildfires in Brazil between January and December of 2021.