Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Rocky Mountain CESU | Apply Online

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the purpose of this CESU funding opportunity?

This opportunity supports work to improve how climate modeling information is found, organized, and shared on the web for a specific user community. It targets the problem that guidance on climate models is often scattered across inconsistent web pages, documentation, and other online resources, making it difficult for users to determine which models fit their needs and how to apply them correctly.

Which federal office is offering this opportunity?

The opportunity is offered through the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center (NOROCK) under the Rocky Mountain Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU).

What user community is this project meant to serve?

The project is aimed at people who rely on climate model information in applied settings, including natural resource managers, applied scientists, and climatologists. The focus is on serving a defined community with persistent, recurring information needs.

Is this funding intended to create a new climate model?

No. The near-term deliverable is not a new climate model. The funded work is intended to produce an improved system for finding and structuring climate-model-related web information in ways that match how practitioners look for guidance and make decisions.

What problem is the project trying to solve?

Users often face a scattered and inconsistent landscape of online climate model resources, such as web pages, documentation, and guidance materials. This makes it hard to efficiently locate relevant information, compare models, and apply models responsibly. The project seeks to create tailored, user-informed methods to collect and disseminate those resources.

What is meant by "specialized web retrieval" in this announcement?

Specialized web retrieval refers to techniques and tools that search for and gather web resources based on the long-lasting information needs of a particular user group, rather than generic, one-off search behavior. The project emphasizes retrieval methods shaped by repeated, persistent questions that come up for the defined community.

Why is the emphasis on "persistent information needs" important?

The announcement highlights that there has been relatively little prior research on long-lasting, recurring information needs within a tightly targeted group of users. Because similar needs arise repeatedly for this community, the project aims to leverage that repetition to enable more structured, smarter search and organization methods than standard search engines typically provide.

What form is the curated output expected to take?

The outputs are expected to be a harvested, filtered, and organized set of relevant web pages that functions like a curated knowledge base. This curated collection should help users understand climate change models, compare them, and make better-informed choices about model selection and use.

How does the project relate to decision support?

The work is framed as both an information retrieval effort and a decision-support foundation. In the longer term, the solicitation points toward technologies that could support decision-making workflows that rely on climate models, potentially informing choices in areas like species and habitat management and research planning for future modeling directions.

What kinds of technical approaches does the opportunity anticipate?

The announcement anticipates approaches such as personalized web retrieval, tailored (and possibly dynamic) organization of collected pages to support browsing, machine learning methods that infer or classify climate model capabilities, and representations of models that help users choose parameters and interpret outputs responsibly.

What are the three concrete goals described in the opportunity?

The opportunity lists three goals:

1. Develop a system that constructs search queries, submits them to one or more search engines, distributes results to interested users, and gathers relevance feedback so retrieval improves iteratively.
2. Design a repository that persistently stores and enables sharing of the collected web pages, creating a durable and accessible collection.
3. Identify which machine learning and information retrieval techniques work best for tailored searching for this specific community, implying testing and assessment of approaches.

How is user relevance feedback expected to be used?

User feedback is described as central to the system. Search results are distributed to interested users who provide relevance feedback, and that feedback loop is expected to help the system learn what is useful to the community and iteratively improve the quality of what it retrieves and shares.

What is the role of the repository in this project?

The repository is intended to persistently store and enable sharing of collected web pages, so the output is not just a temporary list of search results. Instead, it becomes a durable, accessible collection that can be used over time.

Is this award a grant or a cooperative agreement?

This is a discretionary award issued as a cooperative agreement. That indicates USGS is likely to have substantial involvement during project performance compared to a standard grant.

What is the activity category for this opportunity?

The opportunity is listed under the Science and Technology and other Research and Development activity category.

What is the CFDA number associated with this funding?

The announcement lists CFDA 15.808 (USGS Research and Data Collection).

How many awards were anticipated?

The opportunity anticipated a single award.

What was the estimated total funding amount?

The estimated total funding amount for the anticipated single award was $32,000.

Is cost sharing or matching required?

No. The announcement states that cost sharing or matching was not required.

Who is eligible to apply?

Eligibility is restricted to organizations that are participating partners in the Rocky Mountain CESU Program. This reflects the CESU structure as a network of partner institutions collaborating with federal agencies on research, technical assistance, and education.

When was the opportunity posted and when did it close?

The original posting date was July 14, 2009, and the closing date was July 24, 2009.

What does it mean that the announcement was archived?

The announcement was archived on August 23, 2009, indicating it is no longer an active, open solicitation based on the provided timeline.

Who was the listed contact for administrative questions?

The listed contact was Faith Graves, Contract Specialist at USGS.