for National Geographic News For most of the world's plant life,
the effect of the pace of climate change over the past two
decades has been productive, according to an analysis of climate
and satellite data collected between 1982 and 1999. The
research, reported in the June 6 issue of Science, addresses the
question of how global vegetation has responded to changes in
precipitation, temperature, and cloud cover patterns. Such
climate factors determine how vegetation grows. Previous studies
have looked at vegetation's response to climate change at
regional scales, but this is the first study to look at it from
a global perspective. "This is the first global representation
of climate changes and how they might influence vegetation,"
said Ramakrishna Nemani, a climate change researcher at the
University of Montana in Missoula who led the study. According
to the analysis, global climate change has eased climatic
constraints on plant life around the globe, allowing vegetation
to increase 6 percent over the study