[2019] All of the grass on the planet has died?!

I am very new to this game -

some friends and I joined a server on day 1 and built some shacks, got some basic stuff set up, stockpiles with lots of wood. Then we log on the next day and literally the entire planet is brown and has no grass. Its all f*cking dirt. I dont understand why... I looked through the pollution data and we had a lot of debris because we didn't always destroy the branches from trees. But theres no way this kills the whole planet. Please someone explain? this is kind of pissing me off because everything is so ugly. Help!