The forests of today will not be the forests of tomorrow. Rising temperatures, deforestation, development and climate-induced disasters are transforming the very makeup of Earth's forests, new research published in the journal Science finds. Older, bigger trees — stalwarts in their respective ecosystems — are being lost at an alarming rate, making the planet's collective forests shorter and younger. The shift is being driven at different rates by different causes in different places, the study's authors say, but the consequences will be global. Old growth forests absorb and store massive amounts of climate-warming carbon dioxide. They provide habitat for rare and critically endangered species and foster rich biodiversity. And they're disappearing fast. Researchers found that the world lost roughly one-third of its old growth forest between 1900 and 2015. In North America and Europe, where more data was available, they found that tree mortality has doubled in the past 40 years. Warming
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