Gatti has spent years observing the Amazon from the air. She believes we are as little as five years from a point of no return, where lush rainforest irreversibly begins to convert into dry savannah. It is also the point at which billions of tonnes of carbon would be dumped into the atmosphere. “It’s a nightmare,” she says.

That nightmare scenario is the infamous Amazon tipping point, where the ecosystem can no longer cope with the damage being inflicted and irreversibly flips into a new stable state. Like a game of Jenga, brick after stabilising brick is removed until the tower collapses in a heap.

Warnings that this is approaching have now taken on extreme urgency. The rate of deforestation has increased sharply and is fast approaching the theoretical limit. In September, the Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA) – a group of more than 200 experts including Gatti – released an assessment of the state of play. The verdict: we are on the edge of disaster. …

Source: The Amazon is turning into savannah – we have 5 years to save it | New Scientist