We’re already living with more climate extremes: heat, flooding, drought, wind, and wildfire. As we look to the future, the condition of Boulder’s wildlife and landscapes will determine how we live under these circumstances. They’re our greatest assets and allies: Forests provide shade and cooling; riparian zones absorb floodwater; carbon-rich soils absorb rain and sustain healthy, biodiverse landscapes that deliver life-protecting services.
Working with Nature to Improve Life in Our Communities
Nature is our best ally in preparing for change.
The city’s Nature-based Climate Solutions team builds Boulder’s capacity for a climate-resilient future by working across three action areas:
What We’re Doing for the Boulder Community
Force of Nature
The living world around us is our key tool for facing the world ahead of us: it has remarkable intelligence developed over millions of years of living through difficulty and change. When we partner with Boulder’s living creatures — from trees, shrubs, and forbs and grasses to hummingbirds, pollinators, and microbes — we become more climate resilient, because we have more access to critical resources like fresh air, clean water, healthy food, and cooler places.
Community Sense
It takes careful observation to learn how to be a good partner to Boulder’s living world. We all have a role to play in being stewards of the natural place where we live. Our teams gather data to empower Boulder community members to contribute to the health and regeneration of our ecosystems and communities.
Home Front
Every Boulder community member contributes to our shared ecosystem. Each of us has the opportunity and capacity to shape the future of the living world around us — from something as small as a container garden outside an apartment building to something as large as a farm integrating regenerative agriculture practices.
What are Nature-based Climate Solutions?
Life shapes our climate.
When the living world around us degrades, climate change accelerates. Fewer healthy plants mean less carbon is absorbed, less land is covered, and the water cycle is disrupted: all key drivers of climate destabilization. Confronting climate change doesn’t just ask us to decarbonize our energy systems; it asks us to restore our biodiverse world. Our nature-based climate solutions work hard to restore Boulder’s living world so it can work hard to stabilize our climate.
Examples include:
Restoring and expanding natural and urban forests
Enhancing our landscapes’ ability to absorb extreme weather through coordinated green infrastructure
Supporting natural mosquito predators to reduce or eliminate chemical controls against West Nile virus
Enhancing shade and moisture retention to reduce wildfire risk in the wildland-urban interface
Protecting the stability and purity of our watershed and water supply
Health, Safety & Community Richness
Nature-based Climate Solutions strengthen essential infrastructure for the entire Boulder Community
At any given time, there are hundreds of initiatives underway across the city and its open space landscapes. Our cross-departmental teams of resource stewardship specialists work on everything from reducing fire risk in our urban-wildland interfaces to creating systems that guide and absorb enormous volumes of stormwater. We do all this in partnership with nature: learning from beavers how to develop low-tech diversion systems, expanding habitats for dragonflies, swallows, and other natural mosquito predators, and removing exotic aquatic plants from the reservoir. Nature is our most powerful ally.