Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Pacific Northwest CESU | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

This grant opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number 09HQPA0038) is a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) discretionary funding announcement under the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) network, specifically the Pacific Northwest CESU. It would be awarded as a cooperative agreement, meaning the USGS expects to have substantial involvement in the work rather than simply issuing funds and stepping back. The Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center (NOROCK) is the USGS unit behind the project. While NOROCK generally supports natural resource management science across Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Idaho, this particular effort is focused on one of the three representative western U.S. forest ecosystems being studied: the California Sierra Nevada forest.

The core purpose is to improve scientific understanding of how climate variability, long-term climate trends, and larger-scale climate teleconnections shape the patterning of wildfire burn severity across landscapes. The emphasis is not just on whether fires occur or how big their mapped perimeters are, but on heterogeneity: how severity varies across space and time within and among fires. The announcement highlights that a key gap in current fire-climate knowledge is the historic range of variability in burn severity as it relates to climate. In other words, managers and scientists often lack a clear baseline for what severity patterns looked like over time under different climate conditions, which makes it harder to interpret whether current severity patterns are within expected bounds or are shifting in meaningful ways.

Methodologically, the work is designed to move beyond earlier studies that relied on relatively crude fire perimeter data. Instead, it proposes to quantify burn severity spatially using Landsat remote sensing products, which can capture differences in ecological effects within burned areas (for example, patches of low, moderate, and high severity). Those severity patterns would then be analyzed alongside available climate datasets to evaluate how climate signals show up in broad-scale severity mosaics. The project is framed around three main research questions: first, how climate variability such as seasonal patterns, temperature, and precipitation expresses itself spatiotemporally in large-area burn severity patterns; second, how climate teleconnections (large-scale climate oscillations that influence regional weather, such as patterns linked to ocean-atmosphere dynamics) manifest spatially and temporally in those severity patterns; and third, how generalizable observed impacts and trends in burn severity are across the three selected western U.S. ecoregions, including where they are similar versus where they diverge. Although this specific award targets the Sierra Nevada component, the larger study concept is comparative across three representative ecosystems, with an explicit goal of identifying both shared drivers and ecosystem-specific responses.

The expected outcome is practical as well as scientific: results are intended to clarify how climate controls burn severity heterogeneity and the resulting ecological fire effects in western U.S. forests. That kind of understanding can support land and fire management decision-making, especially when agencies are trying to anticipate how fire behavior and ecological impacts may change under different climate conditions. The announcement also situates the work within ongoing and past research and applications across USGS, other Department of the Interior agencies, and the U.S. Forest Service, implying that the project should integrate with existing datasets, methods, and management-relevant questions rather than operating as a standalone academic exercise.

On the administrative side, the opportunity was posted June 2, 2009, with an original and current closing date of June 11, 2009, and an archive date of July 11, 2009. The estimated total funding is $57,000, with one expected award; the listing shows no stated award ceiling or floor. There is no cost sharing or matching requirement. Eligibility is restricted to organizations that are participating partners in the Pacific Northwest CESU Program, consistent with CESU rules that limit awards to member institutions within the relevant CESU network. The CFDA number attached to the opportunity is 15.808 (USGS Research and Data Collection). For access issues or administrative questions, the listed contact is Faith Graves, Contract Specialist, at 703-648-7356.

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