Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Californian CESU | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Californian CESU funding opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number 10HQPA0048) is a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) discretionary cooperative agreement aimed at supporting university-led research on hydroecological modeling in western U.S. mountain watersheds. The project is designed to advance science and technology research and development by applying and improving the RHESSys model (Regional HydroEcological Simulation System) to better understand how ecosystem processes and watershed hydrology behave now and how they are likely to change under future climate conditions. The work is framed around ecosystem forecasting and integrated modeling, with a strong emphasis on producing results that are useful for understanding water supply timing and quantity, vegetation change, disturbance impacts, and potential consequences for aquatic habitat.

A central feature of the opportunity is its geographic and ecological scope. The research focuses first on five forested montane watersheds selected to represent a wide range of environmental conditions across the western United States: MacDonald Watershed in Montana, Loch Vale Watershed in Colorado, Jemez Watershed in New Mexico, the Upper Merced watershed in California, and Stehekin Watershed in Washington. These sites are treated as core locations for developing, testing, and comparing modeling approaches across contrasting climates, elevations, snow regimes, vegetation communities, and disturbance histories. The intention is not just to run a model at isolated sites, but to build a consistent modeling framework that can be applied across multiple watersheds to identify shared drivers and important differences.

The technical heart of the project is iterative refinement and integration of RHESSys simulations. One objective is to improve estimates of coupled ecohydrologic responses by leveraging the value of previous western mountain simulations while incorporating new datasets as they become available. In practice, this means calibrating and updating model inputs and parameters using improved meteorological data, hydrologic observations, vegetation information, and other site measurements so that the model better captures real-world watershed behavior. This iterative approach is meant to strengthen confidence in model outputs and ensure that forecasts are grounded in the best available evidence.

Another major objective is to use RHESSys for forecasting how ecosystems respond to climate change across several dimensions, including hydrology, vegetation, disturbance, and aquatic habitat. Rather than focusing on streamflow alone, the work explicitly recognizes that mountain watersheds operate as linked systems where climate influences snow accumulation and melt, plant water use, carbon cycling, and disturbance processes such as fire, all of which feed back into water availability and timing. The modeling is meant to produce scenario-based projections that can be compared across sites and decades, helping researchers and managers understand plausible future trajectories under different climate conditions.

A specific, detailed task area involves quantifying streamflow responses to combined climate and ecological drivers. Using RHESSys, the awardee is expected to develop streamflow estimates for both existing conditions and projected future climates for each of the five core watersheds. The project calls for assessing how multiple controls on streamflow interact to change the magnitude and timing of runoff, including shifts in snow and glacier melt dynamics and changes in vegetation water use. The opportunity emphasizes producing ecologically relevant streamflow metrics for each climate scenario, then using those metrics to assess the vulnerability of aquatic organisms under future climates. This points to outputs that go beyond simple annual flow totals, such as seasonal low-flow indicators, peak timing, duration of critical habitat conditions, and other flow characteristics tied to biological thresholds.

The opportunity also prioritizes understanding interactions among hydrology, vegetation, and disturbance through a more integrated modeling framework. The described approach is to couple RHESSys spatially explicit hydrology and carbon cycling with two additional modeling components: (a) a forest succession model capable of distinguishing individual species (supporting more realistic vegetation change over time), and (b) a raster-based fire spread and fire effects model that links to watershed hydrology through fuel moisture algorithms. This integrated framework is intended to represent how climate-driven and management-driven changes in fire regimes and vegetation dynamics can alter watershed water balance, runoff response, and ecosystem function. To drive these simulations, the project anticipates using downscaled meteorological data for current and future decades, along with fire management scenarios, to capture variability from both climate forces and human decision-making.

While the initial modeling focus is on the five core watersheds, the plan explicitly calls for expansion to at least five additional montane watersheds to broaden the environmental gradients represented across the West. This expansion is meant to improve generality, stress-test the modeling framework in more varied settings, and create a stronger basis for comparative insights about which watershed characteristics most strongly control hydrologic and ecological outcomes under climate change and disturbance.

From an administrative and eligibility perspective, this is a CESU-based cooperative agreement, meaning it is issued under the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit Program, a partnership framework intended to facilitate research, technical assistance, and education collaborations. Eligibility is limited to organizations that are formal participating partners of the Californian CESU. The opportunity anticipated a single award (Expected Awards: 1), with an estimated total funding amount of $77,685, and it specifies no cost sharing or matching requirement. The funding notice was posted on April 13, 2010, with an original and current closing date of April 22, 2010, and an archive date of May 22, 2010. The CFDA number listed is 15.808 (U.S. Geological Survey Research and Data Collection). The contact named for access or administrative issues is Faith Graves, Contract Specialist, at 703-648-7356.

Overall, the grant is best understood as a targeted, model-centered research effort where USGS is seeking a qualified university CESU partner to advance RHESSys-based ecohydrologic simulations across representative western mountain watersheds, produce climate-relevant forecasts of hydrology and ecosystem response, and build an integrated framework that connects carbon cycling, species-level vegetation succession, and fire dynamics to watershed hydrology in a way that supports ecological risk and vulnerability assessments.

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