Climate Catalyst Program

Scroll down for information about applying to the 2022 Land and Climate Catalyst Planning Grant opportunity.

Across the country, communities and ecosystems are experiencing climate change and grappling with its unknowns. How much will temperatures rise and how quickly? How will these changes impact the forests, streams, and wildlife we protect?

Despite this uncertainty, scientists agree: land protection is, and will remain, a key strategy for ensuring that natural systems -- and the plants, animals, and people that depend upon them -- can continue to thrive.

Since 2012, OSI has been helping land trusts and other groups that protect and steward land develop effective approaches to conserving land in a rapidly changing climate. Working alongside our capital grants program that funds the acquisition of land that is resilient and stores and sequesters carbon, OSI has supported the development of over 60 climate-aligned conservation plans across the East and offered workshops, webinars, and trainings to over 6,000 participants.

OSI’s Catalyst Program currently focuses on addressing the following climate issues: habitat resilience, forest carbon storage, and sequestration, and community resilience to climate impacts such as flooding. We support conservation groups and communities by offering planning grants and technical assistance, authoring guidance documents, and hosting workshops.

Virtual 'Office Hours'

Program staff will also offer two virtual “office hours” sessions where applicants can ask questions and receive feedback on project proposals. Please use this link to schedule a 20-minute individual consultation during one of the two sessions:

• Office Hours Session 1: May 20, 2022 - 12-2 PM 
• Eastern Office Hours Session 2: May 25, 2022 - 3-5 PM Eastern

See a full list of 2021 grantees here. Learn about three of the projects supported in the 2021 grant round here.

Contact OSI Conservation Planning Manager Hallie Schwab ([email protected]) with any questions.

Guidance Documents

OSI works with partners to distill research and best practices into practical guides to inform strategic land protection and land management. See several examples of this work below.

Freshwater Flooding

The Role of Land Protection in Mitigating Freshwater Flooding Hazard: This report summarizes five land protection and conservation planning strategies that harness land protection to curb flood impacts and outlines the critical role that land trusts can play in supporting community resilience as the climate changes.

Climate Resilience

Conserving Nature in a Changing Climate provides a user-friendly workbook for land trusts and other conservation organizations to gain the knowledge and tools to fulfill their critical missions, even in the face of uncertainty. With a basic knowledge of relevant climate science and the tools described in this guide, conservation leaders can revisit and revise their land protection goals, and confidently explain to funders, board members, and landowners why their efforts matter now more than ever. The workbook, developed in partnership with the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Collaborative and a team of land trust advisors, includes a free online mapping platform to help land trusts identify climate resilient sites. This tool, built for the Northeast, complements The Nature Conservancy’s Resilient Land Mapping Tool.

Carbon Mitigation

Meeting the Challenge of Climate: How Land Trusts, Policymakers, and Public Agencies Can Achieve Carbon Goals Through Strategic Forest Protection: Developed in consultation with scientists and experts at American Forests, The Nature Conservancy, and the Land Trust Alliance, this guide provides criteria for the selection, completion, and successful management of land protection projects for the capture and storage of forest carbon.

Six Simple Steps: Evaluate the Contribution of your Land Protection Project to a Low Carbon Future: This short ‘how to’ guide walks through a series of steps for using an online tool to evaluate how much carbon a forest protection project stores today, and how much additional carbon could be sequestered by 2050.

Climate Communications

How to Talk About Climate Change: This report from the Land Trust Alliance and the Open Space Institute offers guidance to help land trusts connect on climate issues and effectively communicate about the benefits of protecting land with climate in mind.

Workshops & Trainings

Sorting through the vast amount data and scientific concepts related to climate change can be overwhelming. OSI frequently offers webinars, in-person trainings, and conference presentations with guidance and approaches to help land trusts address climate impacts in their communities.

To date, in OSI’s workshops and presentations we have covered topics of terrestrial climate resilience, carbon mitigation, sea-level rise, wildlife corridors, flood hazard mitigation, and climate communications.

Capital Grants

OSI’s education and outreach complement our Appalachian Landscapes Land Protection Fund. For more information, please visit the Fund page.

This program is made possible through support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Jane’s Trust Foundation, the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the Volgenau Foundation, the William Penn Foundation, and several generous individual donors.