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Opportunity Summary:

EarthScope (NSF Funding Opportunity Number 11-535) is a National Science Foundation grant opportunity designed to support Earth science research that uses the EarthScope Facility to investigate the four-dimensional structure of the North American continent, meaning how the continent is built in three dimensions and how it changes through time. The program is set up as a broad, integrated framework that brings together many parts of the geosciences to tackle continent-scale questions that are difficult to answer without coordinated, high-quality observations collected across wide regions. It emphasizes research that improves understanding of how North America is structured, how it evolved, and how it behaves today as tectonic forces, fluids, and deformation interact from the surface down into the deep Earth.

The scientific scope is intentionally wide and includes studies of fault properties and the earthquake process, including how faults initiate, lock, slip, and generate seismic hazards. It also supports work on strain transfer, which looks at how deformation moves through the crust and how stress changes in one place can influence activity elsewhere. Other key topics include the role of magmatic and hydrous fluids in the crust and mantle, since melts and water strongly affect rock strength, seismic signals, and the dynamics of tectonic and volcanic systems. Additional focus areas include plate boundary processes, large-scale continental deformation, continental structure and evolution, and investigations into the composition and structure of the deep Earth beneath North America. Taken together, the solicitation aims to fund projects that connect observations to physical processes, often by combining field measurements, geophysical imaging, modeling, and data synthesis.

A central feature of the opportunity is the EarthScope Facility itself, which is described as a multi-purpose array of instruments and observatories that expands what Earth scientists can measure and analyze. The facility includes three major components: the Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO), the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD), and the USArray. These components provide coordinated geophysical observations that can be used to study everything from crustal deformation and plate boundary motion to seismic wave imaging of the mantle and direct observations related to fault-zone behavior. By leveraging these shared, large-scale resources, funded projects are expected to advance understanding of North American tectonics and deep structure in ways that smaller, isolated datasets typically cannot.

Beyond research, EarthScope is also positioned as an organizing platform for education and data integration. The program highlights a centralized forum for Earth science education at all levels, suggesting that proposals can include or connect to efforts that broaden participation, improve teaching and learning, and translate facility-derived discoveries into educational materials and experiences. It also explicitly points to the development of cyberinfrastructure as a strong opportunity area, particularly tools and systems to integrate, distribute, and analyze diverse datasets produced by EarthScope instruments. In practice, this encourages proposals that do more than generate results for a single study area, such as work that improves data accessibility, interoperability, analysis pipelines, or community-facing data products.

The solicitation calls for single-investigator or collaborative proposals to conduct scientific research associated with the EarthScope Facility, as well as proposals for support activities that further the scientific and educational goals of EarthScope. Awards are made as cooperative agreements, which typically indicates substantial involvement by NSF in oversight or coordination compared with a standard grant. The opportunity is listed under the Science and Technology and other Research and Development activity category, with CFDA number 47.050 (Geosciences). The estimated total funding available is $8,000,000, with an expected number of awards around 25, and it includes a cost sharing or matching requirement. Eligibility is described as unrestricted, meaning it is broadly open to applicant types, subject to any additional eligibility details that may appear in the full program text.

Key timing details in the posted information show an original posting date of March 30, 2011, with a full proposal deadline of July 16, 2011, and the same July 16 deadline recurring annually thereafter. Applicants are directed to NSF Publication 11-535 for the full solicitation and requirements, and technical access issues are routed to NSF grants.gov support at grantsgovsupport@nsf.gov.

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