New Website Connects North Carolina Landowners with Nature-Based Solutions for Healthier Watersheds

Open Spaces Resiliency Project launches online resource to restore streams, improve drought resilience, and protect wildlife habitat

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Open Spaces Resiliency Project (OSRP) has launched a new website that gives North Carolina landowners, conservation organizations, and community partners access to innovative, science-based approaches for restoring streams and landscapes while improving resilience to drought, flooding, wildfire, and habitat loss.

The new website, www.ncopenspaces.org, introduces website visitors to Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration (LTPBR), an approach that works with nature instead of against it. Rather than relying on expensive engineered solutions, LTPBR uses simple, natural materials and proven techniques to restore the natural processes that keep streams, wetlands, and floodplains healthy. These approaches help slow, spread, sink, and store water across the landscape, allowing ecosystems to recover over time while improving water quality, wildlife habitat, and groundwater recharge.

Across North Carolina, decades of stream channelization, land development, intensive agriculture, and changing weather patterns have left many streams deeply eroded and disconnected from their floodplains. As water moves through these damaged systems too quickly, communities experience increased erosion, degraded water quality, reduced groundwater recharge, greater wildfire risk, and the loss of important wildlife habitat. Process-based restoration seeks to reverse those trends by restoring the natural functions that healthy watersheds once provided.

OSRP is working to bring these proven restoration methods to North Carolina through demonstration projects, technical assistance, landowner partnerships, training opportunities, and educational resources. The website highlights ongoing work in the Broad, Upper Catawba, French Broad, and New River basins while providing case studies, project information, and opportunities for landowners to learn whether their property may be a good fit for restoration.

"North Carolina has an incredible opportunity to restore the natural systems that have sustained our landscapes for thousands of years," said Jeff Gray, Project Director for the Open Spaces Resiliency Project. "Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration has already transformed streams and watersheds across the West, and we're building the partnerships, scientific expertise, and local knowledge needed to adapt these methods for North Carolina's unique landscapes. By working with landowners and conservation partners, we can restore healthier watersheds that provide cleaner water, stronger wildlife habitat, and greater resilience for future generations."

Unlike traditional restoration projects that often focus on stabilizing a single stream reach, OSRP takes a watershed-scale approach by identifying where natural processes can be restored to create lasting ecological benefits. The project combines scientific data, landscape analysis, and collaboration with landowners to design restoration strategies that are practical, cost-effective, and tailored to each site's conditions.

Visitors to the new website can explore the science behind Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration, learn about current and future projects, discover how restoration benefits both people and wildlife, and find information about participating as a landowner or partner.

To learn more, visit www.ncopenspaces.org.