Boulder staff present desertification risk assessment and launch Climate Resilient Landscapes Challenge

City staff presented a 23‑year remote‑sensing desertification risk assessment of Boulder‑area lands and previewed a new Climate Resilient Landscapes Challenge, and a public commenter urged the board to support a proposed change to the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan that would prioritize upgrades to century‑old irrigation ditches.

The Nature‑Based Climate Solutions team told the Environmental Advisory Board the assessment used satellite data and other remote sensing to estimate current condition and trends across city and county properties through 2023. A staff member from the team summarized the project’s goal as testing whether the city can “develop a system for assessing the condition of our landscapes and their change over time” so managers can identify areas at risk of ecological decline.

The staff presentation said Boulder’s 40,000 acres of open space contain an estimated 2,700,000 metric tons of carbon, and on a good year the city’s landscapes could sequester roughly 20,000 tons of carbon — far less than the community’s roughly 1,200,000 metric tons of annual emissions. The analysis also found some years when landscapes were net carbon sources because of wildfire and other disturbances. The presenter cited wind and dust events as examples of on‑the‑ground loss, saying one property lost “something in the order of 15 to 30,000 tons of soil” in a single event that blew away topsoil.

The remote analysis divided…