The Open Space Institute’s (OSI) Resilient Landscapes Initiative engages land trusts and public agencies across the eastern United States to respond to climate change. Through the Initiative, OSI seeks to increase (1) protection of lands, through acquisition and conservation easements, that can facilitate adaptation of plants, animals and natural systems to climate change, and (2) access to and use of climate science. OSI’s Resilient Landscapes Initiative is underpinned by Resilient Sites for Terrestrial Conservation, an approach developed by scientists at The Nature Conservancy to identify places most likely to be resilient to climate change.  In 2014, OSI is launched the Southeast Resilient Landscapes Fund, with $6.2 million from The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, to apply the TNC resiliency science in nine southern states (Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia).  Jon Evans was selected to serve on the OSI Science Advisors Panel that used a two-step process – a science filter and a feasibility filter – to select two to four focus areas within which OSI will make land protection grants available.   Partly based on the data already available through the South Cumberland Action Plan, the South Cumberland Region was chosen as the first focus area of this intiative.