Check out Ze’s blog on the science of hiking.

http://hikingscience.blogspot.com/

Over the course of thirty years, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service and various academic institutions counted trees in 76 plots, each the size of two football fields, in forests across six western states and British Columbia. When they looked at the data last year, they found that mortality rates had increased significantly in almost every plot, with the rate doubling over periods ranging from 17 years to 29 years. Crucially, the increasing deaths were not matched by higher rates of “recruitment” — the technical term for a forest’s birthrate.

Read the rest of the TIME article here.