Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Sout Florida Caribbean CESU | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

This grant opportunity, offered by the U.S. Geological Survey through the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) Program for the South Florida Caribbean CESU, supports research focused on understanding how hydrologic change shapes the Everglades food web over seasonal wet and dry cycles. The Everglades is described as a highly flat, subtropical marsh where even small changes in average water levels can rapidly shift where flooding occurs, which in turn reshapes habitat availability and reorganizes biological communities. Because the system runs on strong seasonality tied to rainfall, the abundance and distribution of organisms can change dramatically across the year, and those changes can ripple upward through the food chain, affecting not only small fish and invertebrates but also iconic wading birds and other predators that depend on them.

The core work funded under this opportunity is the development of a spatially explicit ecosystem model that links hydrology to food-web dynamics. The model is intended to represent a segment of the Everglades hydroscape (with Taylor Slough given as an example) using a gridded landscape made up of 100 by 100 square cells, for a total of 10,000 cells. Each cell is assumed to represent a 100 meter by 100 meter area, although the announcement notes the grid size could be expanded if needed. Within each grid cell, the same set of equations would describe exchanges, or fluxes, among food-web components. Hydrology is represented as empirically based water levels that rise and fall through the year, capturing seasonal flooding and drying patterns that determine which areas are inundated and which become dry.

Biologically, the model is expected to include a simplified but functional representation of key trophic levels and recycling processes: primary producers (specifically periphyton), detritus, invertebrate detritivores, fish consumers, and nutrients that are recycled within the system. A major emphasis is placed on the small fish community because these species and their seasonal availability form a foundation for higher trophic levels, including wading birds. The opportunity highlights that, depending on hydrologic conditions, some fish functional groups (such as planktivores and piscivores) may decline or vanish from certain areas while others increase, potentially triggering trophic cascades where top-down effects propagate through multiple levels of the food web.

A second major component of the modeling effort is to incorporate movement rules for organisms across the grid, especially fish and crayfish. The announcement anticipates seasonal movement that tracks changing water depth, with a portion of fish moving up a water-level gradient during floods and moving down the gradient as water levels fall. This movement component is meant to connect localized food-web processes in each cell to landscape-scale patterns driven by changing hydrology, making it possible to explore how shifts in flooding regimes might reorganize prey availability and predator foraging opportunities across space and time.

Administratively, the opportunity is a discretionary funding announcement with the award mechanism listed as a cooperative agreement, indicating expected involvement or collaboration with the agency beyond a standard grant. It falls under the science and technology and other research and development activity category, with one expected award and an estimated total funding amount of $16,000. No cost sharing or matching is required. Eligibility is limited to organizations that are active partners in the South Florida Caribbean CESU network, consistent with CESU program rules that channel projects through established research and technical assistance partnerships. The funding opportunity number is 09HQPA0018, and the original application closing date listed is January 20, 2009, with the program archived on February 19, 2009. For access issues related to the full announcement, the listed contact is Faith Graves, Contract Specialist, at 703-648-7356.

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