The average distance to a forest is increasing for Americans

In a decade it has increased by 14 percent, or about a third of a mile. The loss of isolated forest patches has seen forests move farther on average from any given point in the continental US. In a new PLOS ONE study, Giorgos Mountrakis and colleagues looked at data from 1990 to 2000 and found that the shifting distance was more pronounced in rural areas than in urban settings, as they are at higher risk of losing forested patches.