The Amazon is Earth’s largest tropical rainforest with its own self-sustainaing regional climate and hydrological system. It contains a diversity of forests – from montane to mangroves – across a range of distinct soils and substrates, supported by a biogeochemically-diverse riverine network that drives extensive seasonal rainfall. It has been clear for a while that this whole system is under pressure. Unsustainable developing practices – including deforestation for mining, agriculture and dairy farming, as well as illegal logging activities – have all brought it to an ecological tipping point.