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Boulder Hazard Mitigation Plan Introduction Income levels impact recovery from all disasters, but the effects of institutional racism have been also seen in problems with Latinx access to resources after the 2013 floods, and in lack of warning systems in Spanish. There are a number of ongoing efforts to combat the impacts of racism within Boulder County government, but this plan acknowledges that existing inequities increase hazard vulnerabilities for people of color. Other areas of significant vulnerability in Boulder County include the 60% of the population over 65 that has a mental or physical disability, the 27% of residents that do not earn enough to cover basic needs, and the lack of affordable housing that increases commute times and places heavy reliance on working roadways, such as the 50,000 people that commute into the City of Boulder to work every day (TRENDS 2019). Problems with underinsurance are prevalent throughout the mountain communities, as many homeowners do not have enough to cover their wildfire risk. In manufactured home parks, and for monolingual Spanish speakers, recovery in Boulder County has been made more difficult by lack of access to resources and the lack of comprehensive data collection on needs and culturally appropriate disaster preparedness. These gaps in services indicate a need for a more robustly supported cultural broker network and the creation of community -led after action reports that will assist in improving and adjusting mitigation plans and actions. Ecological Natural hazards are part of geophysical processes that are constantly at work across the Earth. Movements of tectonic plates, alterations in water availability, precipitation, wind, lightning, etc. are all -natural processes that both create and destroy natural resources. Human activities have affected landscape processes and resource availability for millennia. Throughout North America, this has included indigenous practices of prescribed burns in forests and grasslands, rotational agriculture, hunting, and fishing, etc. With colonization of the United States, exploitation of natural resources and disruption to natural systems accelerated, and practices such as overlogging of forests, fire suppression, cattle ranching, and mining reduced the availability and resiliency of intact ecological systems. These exploitative practices have at times increased the occurrence and severity of hazards, including events such as the Peshtigo fire in 1871. No impact, however, has caused so much disruption as climate change, which has accelerated rapidly since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution around 1750. The advent of fossil fuel powered machines has been shown to have begun warming parts of the world as early as 1830. The increase in greenhouse gas emissions and warming global temperatures are disrupting ecological systems on both large and small scale. Coupled with increased development, clear cutting of forests, and the destruction of habitat around the world and throughout the United States, including for continued oil and gas development, the world is staring at an ecological crisis. This includes rapid temperature swings that stress plant life and reduce soil health; loss of ocean current strength with an accompanying collapse of aquatic food chains; loss of pollinators that would maintain viability of crops and flowering plant life; and many other damaging consequences that threaten human life as well as the robustness of the built environment. Ecological systems provide the foundation for human technologies and community construction, and ecological health is a fundamental driver of human life and economic viability. Nationally, the United States is unprepared for the ecological impacts of climate change on nearly all points. The hazards that arise from geophysical processes will become more extreme and more difficult to predict as climate change effects increase in strength. Natural resources will become scarcer, and economic sectors that are entirely dependent on the environment, such as tourism, will provide less income and fewer jobs. Climate change will also disrupt supply chains, transportation systems, and trade networks. These economic impacts in addition to hazard impacts will increase strain on government resources and reduce community capacities for resilience and recovery. Boulder County's ecological systems are diverse and cover a wide range of ecotones as the County topography rises quickly from the plains to alpine environments. Straddling this transition zone, Boulder County includes shortgrass prairie environments as well as alpine tundra, subalpine and montane forests,