Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Rocky Mountain CESU | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Rocky Mountain CESU funding opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number G15AS00044) was offered by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), specifically through the Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center (NOROCK). The project is framed as a science and technology research effort to improve how long-term monitoring is designed and analyzed on federal lands, with the practical goal of assessing current resource condition (often called "status") and detecting or documenting declines in condition over time. The announcement makes clear that the monitoring focus is tied directly to real-world drivers, especially management actions and climate change, meaning the work is intended to support decision-making rather than being purely academic.

A central theme of the opportunity is strengthening the statistical backbone of long-term monitoring programs. NOROCK was looking for a CESU partner to explore and recommend statistical methods that can stand up to scrutiny and remain reliable over many years. That includes developing or refining sampling designs, particularly designs that use probabilistic sampling (where sites are selected using known probabilities so results can be defensibly generalized to a broader landscape). Alongside sampling design, the opportunity emphasizes methods for estimating both status and trends in a robust way, which typically implies careful attention to uncertainty, bias, and the ability to detect change through time even when field data are noisy, incomplete, or influenced by shifting environmental conditions.

The project also anticipates an ongoing, practical need for routine data analysis and visualization of probabilistically sampled monitoring data. In other words, it is not only about proposing high-level methods, but also about enabling repeatable workflows that can be used as new monitoring data come in year after year. This suggests deliverables could include recommended analytical approaches, templates or protocols for recurring analyses, and visualization approaches that make trends, variability, and confidence in results easier for managers and partners to interpret.

The work is geographically relevant to the Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center mission area, which covers mountain and plains ecosystems across Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Idaho. NOROCK describes its broader role as producing and sharing scientific information that supports natural resource management decisions, and it routinely collaborates with a wide range of partners, including federal and state land management agencies, Native American tribes, academic institutions, and other organizations. The monitoring-statistics emphasis fits that mission by helping agencies and partners make better comparisons across large landscapes and longer timeframes, and by improving the credibility and usefulness of monitoring results in policy and management contexts.

Administratively, this was a discretionary funding opportunity using a cooperative agreement, meaning USGS likely expected substantial involvement or collaboration during the project rather than a hands-off grant. The opportunity anticipated a single award (Expected Awards: 1) with an estimated total funding amount of $44,504, and it listed no cost-sharing or matching requirement. The CFDA number associated with the program is 15.808 (U.S. Geological Survey Research and Data Collection). The posting and creation dates were March 16, 2015, with an original and current closing date of March 30, 2015, and an archive date of June 16, 2015. Award floor and ceiling were both listed as 0, which typically signals that the specific amount would be determined through the proposal and negotiation process rather than being bounded in the listing itself.

Eligibility was limited to partners in the Rocky Mountain Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) Program. CESUs are partnership networks designed to streamline and strengthen collaboration on research, technical assistance, and education, so this opportunity was not open broadly to all universities or nonprofits unless they were already participating Rocky Mountain CESU partners. For access to the full announcement, the listing pointed applicants to Grants.gov, and provided a USGS contact (Faith Graves, 703-648-7356, fgraves@usgs.gov) for help obtaining the full announcement if there were access issues.

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