Warming is chasing cloud forests steadily uphill

Deforestation higher up on mountains will leave these Mesoamerican forests nowhere to retreat

The tops of trees fade into a misty cloud in this image inside a cloud forest, from the vantage point of looking straight up.

Mist swallows the treetops in a cloud forest in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. Bromeliads, mosses and other epiphytes cover the tree trunks, greatly increasing the surface area of the canopy, thereby allowing it to collect vast amounts of water from tiny fog droplets.

Santiago Ramírez-Barahona

Cloud forests are strange and ghostly places — akin to coral reefs hidden high on tropical mountains.