Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Rocky Mountain CESU | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Rocky Mountain CESU grant opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number 09HQPA0042) is a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) cooperative agreement aimed at supporting university-led research on how climate-driven disturbances are reshaping forest ecosystems across the western United States. The core purpose is to improve understanding and quantification of two closely linked issues: how wildfire and bark beetle outbreaks are affecting forest carbon stocks at broad geographic scales, and how climate conditions help trigger and sustain mountain pine beetle (MPB) outbreaks, with an eye toward better forecasting under future climate change.

A major portion of the work focuses on building a comprehensive picture of forest carbon impacts from disturbance. The project calls for quantifying forest carbon stocks across the western U.S. in areas affected by wildfire and bark beetle outbreaks, using a combination of historical reconstruction and forward-looking projections. Historically, the work is expected to reconstruct carbon stocks impacted by fires back to 1980 and by beetle outbreaks back to 1997, relying heavily on existing datasets, agency inventories, and other established information sources rather than starting from scratch with entirely new field campaigns. The expected outputs include annual statistics and mapped products summarized at multiple spatial levels, including county, state, regional, and a Westwide (subcontinental) extent. In addition to looking backward, the project also emphasizes prediction by integrating projected future disturbance area estimates (future climate-induced fire and outbreak areas) across the western U.S., allowing researchers to estimate how carbon impacts may evolve as climate conditions change.

To make sure broadscale mapping and accounting are grounded in real conditions, the opportunity explicitly requires calibration and validation through two Colorado-based case studies that span local to landscape scales. One is Grand County, Colorado, where a severe insect outbreak was ongoing at the time of the announcement, and the second is the 2002 Hayman Fire in Colorado, one of the largest and most studied fires in the region. For these calibration efforts, the grant expects use of burn severity mapping products and forest inventory data to refine estimates of carbon stocks affected by disturbance, helping ensure that Westwide estimates are not purely theoretical and that uncertainties are better characterized.

The second major pillar of the opportunity is advancing the science of climate drivers behind insect outbreaks and the resulting tree mortality, specifically for mountain pine beetle. The program seeks analysis of climate influences on the five major MPB outbreaks that occurred across the western U.S. over the previous 25 years. This includes assembling and harmonizing multiple climate and moisture variables such as temperature, precipitation, drought severity indicators, and soil moisture information. Data sources can include weather stations, gridded climate datasets, and model-derived products, with the announcement pointing to outputs like VIC soil moisture as an example. To connect climate stress to tree response and outbreak timing, the work may also include collecting tree-ring samples from one to five outbreak sites (depending on time and available funding) to measure growth patterns and stress signals during the period leading up to and during outbreaks.

Beyond data assembly, the grant emphasizes applying up-to-date climate suitability modeling approaches to evaluate how temperature and drought interact to create conditions favorable to MPB outbreaks in each location. The intent is to determine which climate factors were actually suitable or limiting during different outbreaks, rather than assuming a single driver. The opportunity also encourages improving existing models by updating parameters and methods, and, where current tools fall short, developing new models that incorporate missing processes. This is meant to strengthen the mechanistic realism of outbreak predictions, including processes like drought impacts on host trees, beetle winter mortality, and changes in seasonal development patterns.

Building on the historical and diagnostic work, the program then expects forecasting that translates climate science into projected future outbreak risk. Researchers are asked to use multiple downscaled climate projections spanning a range of emissions scenarios and climate models to estimate how climate suitability for MPB epidemics may change over coming decades. A key expectation is that forecasts do not just produce a single suitability map, but instead explicitly estimate the contributions of different mechanisms, including drought stress, winter mortality constraints, and adaptive seasonality effects on MPB population dynamics. The emphasis on separating these contributions suggests the agency wants results that can inform both scientific understanding and practical management decisions by clarifying what is driving change and where the most influential uncertainties lie.

From an administrative standpoint, this is a discretionary cooperative agreement under CFDA 15.808 (USGS Research and Data Collection) within the Science and Technology and other Research and Development activity category. The estimated total funding is $73,717, with one expected award, and there is no cost-sharing or matching requirement. Eligibility is restricted to organizations that are participating partners in the Rocky Mountain Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) Program, reflecting the CESU model of leveraging established partnerships among federal agencies, universities, and other collaborators to deliver research, technical assistance, and education. The opportunity was posted on June 15, 2009, and closed on June 25, 2009, with a listed contact of Faith Graves, Contract Specialist (phone 703-648-7356), for access or administrative questions related to the full announcement.

Overall, the grant is structured to produce practical, decision-relevant science products: mapped and quantified disturbance-related carbon impacts across the West over time, calibrated with on-the-ground case studies, and improved models that explain and project how climate shapes mountain pine beetle outbreaks. The combination of historical reconstruction, cross-scale mapping, field-informed calibration, and forward-looking climate scenario analysis signals a strong emphasis on both scientific rigor and usability for agencies tracking carbon dynamics and planning for climate-driven disturbance regimes.

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