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This is the Gullfoss waterfall in Iceland. 100 m³ of water are falling here every second. So this is just about as close as I want to get, because this is a dangerous and volatile environment. But for all of that danger, these raging torrents contain an ingredient which is absolutely vital for life. And the clue is in the name. "Gullfoss" means "Golden Falls". The colour is produced by millions of tonnes of raging water, relentlessly carving through rock and soil. And accumulating that golden sediment.

And there is something else vital being carried in this water… oxygen. Together, these are incredibly potent ingredients. At the moment, all this is just cargo, being swept along by this very fast-moving water. but with ingredients like this, if the environment changes, then the potential for life is huge.

It doesn't matter where you are. Most life on Earth depends on the simple ingredients that start upstream. places where, normally, just if a few specially-adapted creatures can survive. So, how do mere oxygen and sediment ignite such a richness of life downstream?

To find out, I'm going to witness one of the greatest explosions of life on Earth.

Over millions of years, waters from the Brazilian highlands have flooded into a vast lowland basin… the Pantanal.

These murky waters and virtually boiling with fish. I've never seen so much life so densely packed into one place. Every river and every tributary that we paddled up in the Pantanal… Has been lined with these animals. An estimate suggests there may be as many as 10 million caiman living in the Pantanal. That would make it the largest concentration of land vertebrates anywhere on Earth.

But the really staggering thing about the animals in the Pantanal is their sheer size. look at this wonderful bird, is called the jabiru stork. The tallest flying bird in south America.

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This really is a land of the Giants. The world's largest snake, the green anaconda, which can grow to nine metres long. Even the plants are monsters. Look at this splendid spread of a giant waterlilies. Absolutely fabulous things. A single plant produces around 40 leaves and each leaf can grow to 3 m wide. Even the rodents here are the largest in the world.

These are capybara. They're the dominant herbivore in the Pantanal, and they occur here in huge numbers. And what does it take to catch such an overgrown rat? We're about six metres from a wild Jaguar. It's unbelievable. The Jaguars in the Pantanal are the biggest cats anywhere in the Americas. And then, there's the apex predator – the king of the river. Giant otters.

Remarkable animals. They are supremely adapted for their aquatic lifestyle. And given the size of these animals and their abundance here, this has to mean that this water is literally full of fish.

It's like an Eden, it's just packed – packed with life! So, how did that cargo from those barren mountain streams help create this magical place?

Here's a jar of water. I've just collected it from the creek behind me. and look, if I shake it, to mimic the action of a waterfall, swirling and frothing in a violent eddy, can see that all of the material here is now held in suspension.

But what's so important about that material? What is so important about that cargo? Well, when water tumbles down from the mountains, through the fast-flowing streams, along the giant rivers, it's constantly grinding away at the bedrock and the soil, picking up material, so that when it arrives here in the Pantanal, its filled with silt, sediment and detritus – a heady cocktail of inorganic and organic material.

And its filled full of things which are essential for life – like nitrogen and phosphorous. And look – now the water in my jar has begun to slow down, the material in it started to settle out. And this exactly replicates what is happening here in the Pantanal. In fact, settled out right here, and what I'm standing on is the great plain of fertility.

This land of giants is exceptionally fertile because that cocktail of nutrients deposited by the rivers has been trapped here. Gradually, they've buildup, year-on-year, over millions of years.

But this hugely productive process has only been possible thanks to the tireless work of one species of animal. it's so important that even the giant otter depends upon it for its survival.