Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Southern Appalachian Mountians CESU | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

This grant opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number G14AS00031) was issued by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), specifically through the Fort Collins Science Center, under the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) framework for the Southern Appalachian Mountains CESU. It is a discretionary science and technology research award made as a cooperative agreement, meaning the project is expected to involve substantial collaboration with USGS rather than operating as a hands-off grant. The program is rooted in the CESU model, which is designed to connect federal agencies with partner institutions to deliver research, technical assistance, and education that supports resource management and applied science needs.

The purpose of the project is to study how tree species and forest types across the United States respond to nitrogen (N) deposition, with particular attention to the downstream consequences for biodiversity, climate impacts, and carbon (C) sequestration. In practical terms, the work focuses on linking atmospheric nitrogen inputs to changes in soil chemistry and then to measurable plant responses, such as growth and survival. The underlying management and scientific value is to clarify when and where nitrogen deposition shifts from being a nutrient input to becoming a stressor that can damage forest health, alter species composition, and affect ecosystem services like carbon storage.

The core work plan centers on assembling, evaluating, and synthesizing multiple datasets into a spatially representative assessment of relationships between plant-available soil chemistry and plant response. The opportunity calls for compiling field plot data from across the United States and Canada, with an emphasis on three main categories of measurements: soil solution chemistry, soil exchange chemistry, and observed plant responses. By bringing these data streams together, the research aims to test whether there are identifiable thresholds in soil or deposition metrics that correspond to detrimental physiological responses in plants. Those thresholds would be especially useful for risk assessment and for setting or refining critical loads and related environmental benchmarks.

A major deliverable is the creation of a database that consolidates the assembled records into a usable, well-organized resource. After this database is developed, the project then scales up from plot-level observations to a continental U.S. analysis using Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data. FIA is the primary nationwide forest monitoring program in the U.S., and integrating the compiled soil and plant-response data with FIA allows the analysis to move beyond individual study sites and toward broad inference across forest regions, species assemblages, and environmental gradients.

Methodologically, the announcement highlights the use of hierarchical Bayesian analyses. This indicates an expectation of advanced statistical modeling capable of handling multi-level structure in the data (for example, trees nested within plots, plots within regions, and species responding differently under varying conditions). The modeling approach is intended to evaluate tree growth and survival as a function of nitrogen deposition while accounting for key modifiers such as species identity, tree growth stage, soil type, and climate. In other words, the work is not simply correlational at one scale; it is meant to disentangle how deposition interacts with biological traits and environmental context to shape forest outcomes.

From an administrative standpoint, the opportunity anticipated a single award with an estimated total funding amount of $50,000 and no cost-sharing requirement. The award ceiling and floor were listed as $0, which typically signals that the agency is not committing to a strict per-award cap or minimum in the posting itself, even though the expected total program amount is stated. The posting date and creation date were February 3, 2014, with a closing date of February 14, 2014, and the opportunity was archived on May 3, 2014. The CFDA program associated with the funding is 15.808 (U.S. Geological Survey Research and Data Collection).

Eligibility is limited to organizations that are already participating partners in the Southern Appalachian Mountains CESU Program. That restriction is central to the opportunity: even though the research scope is national in scale, the assistance mechanism is being issued through a specific CESU network, and applicants must be within that partnership to be eligible. For access to the full announcement details, the listing points to Grants.gov, and the contact provided for announcement access issues is Faith Graves (703-648-7356, fgraves@usgs.gov).

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