Giving Compass' Take:

• Futurity explores recent trends due to climate change and reports on new research that shows how the planet could experience loss of vegetation not seen in 21,000 years.

• The recent wildfires should add to this alarm, if it hasn't already. But the big question is: What can we do about it? Redoubling our efforts to reduce emissions is a first step, but not the last.

• Here's more on the relationship between climate change and public health problems.

Unless we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the current warming from climate change may drive a dramatic shift in vegetation within the next 100-150 years, according to new research.

The change could match the one seen as the last ice age came to an end and the planet warmed, researchers say.

“We found that ecosystems all over the globe experienced big changes,” says Connor Nolan, a doctoral candidate in the geosciences department at the University of Arizona. “About 70 percent of those sites experienced large changes in the species that were there and what the vegetation looked like.”

The researchers used their analysis of how vegetation changed after the last ice age to project how much current ecosystems could change in the 21st century and beyond as global warming progresses.

The analysis required synthesizing information from published reports for 594 sites covering every continent except Antarctica. The study is the most comprehensive compilation of vegetation and other ecological data covering the period from the height of the ice ages 21,000 years ago to the pre-industrial era, Nolan says.

Read the full article about vegetation loss and climate change by Mari Jensen at Futurity.