New Jersey Pinelands Long term Environmental and Economic Monitoring Program under Cooperative Agreement P13AC00554 between the New Jersey Pinelands Commission and the NPS. | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The National Park Service (NPS) published this notice as a grant opportunity announcement, but it is not an open solicitation and it is not asking anyone to apply. Instead, it serves as a public announcement that a single cooperative agreement award had already been designated to the New Jersey Pinelands Commission to carry out continued work under Cooperative Agreement P13AC00554. The activity falls under CFDA 15.944 (Natural Resource Stewardship) and is structured as a cooperative agreement, which typically signals ongoing collaboration and substantial involvement between the federal agency and the recipient rather than a one-time, arms-length grant.

The purpose of the award is to sustain and expand the New Jersey Pinelands Long Term Environmental and Economic Monitoring Program, a long-running effort designed to track how the Pinelands Comprehensive Management Plan (CMP) relates to real conditions on the ground over time. In practice, this means continued collection, management, and analysis of environmental data (water quality, hydrology, vegetation, wildlife indicators) alongside economic and land-use related indicators, with an emphasis on detecting trends, comparing survey rounds, and translating technical monitoring results into reports that can inform policy, planning, and public understanding.

On the environmental side, a major deliverable is continued analysis of the program's second round of water quality and biological data and a structured comparison between the first and second survey rounds. The Commission is tasked with exploring a way to rank stream and impoundment sites using a multiple-indicator approach that was developed from Mullica River data and then applied to other waters such as Rancocas Creek and Barnegat Bay. If staffing and funding allow, the work also anticipates initiating a report that links land use patterns to measured conditions in water quality and biological indicators, effectively tying monitoring results to potential drivers on the landscape.

Several specific monitoring networks and time series are central to the award. The Commission will continue bimonthly monitoring of pH and specific conductance across a network of 47 Pinelands-wide sites and begin a trend analysis of those parameters covering roughly 2005 through 2013, looking for evidence of directional change over time. In addition, the Commission will examine relationships between nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) and land use, and incorporate both the trend analysis and nutrient-land-use findings into the broader report effort described above. Hydrologic monitoring is another key component: monthly water level monitoring will continue at 35 forest plots and at 30 of 37 ponds, with quarterly visits to seven ponds equipped with continuous recorders to download data and maintain equipment. The Commission will initiate analyses to characterize hydrologic regimes at these sites and to evaluate how water level fluctuations relate across the monitoring network, with results also feeding into the main reporting products.

Wildlife monitoring under the agreement includes continued monthly monitoring of calling anurans (frogs and toads) from March through June at 20 ponds. Beyond ongoing fieldwork, the Commission is expected to initiate an analysis of a long vocalization dataset (1996 to 2013) to evaluate trends in which species are present and how call abundance changes over time. The scope also includes beginning analysis that links anuran survey results with wetland forest vegetation data collected as part of a Wetland Buffer Study, aiming to better understand how habitat conditions and adjacent land management relate to amphibian outcomes.

The award also supports launching or advancing targeted wetland and pond studies that require additional field infrastructure. For the Pond Vulnerability Study, the Commission will select and install staff gages in remaining natural ponds and begin water level and water quality monitoring along with plant and animal surveys for part of a 100-pond sample. A parallel effort is planned for the Created Wetland Study, where the Commission will select and install staff gages in remaining excavated ponds and stormwater basins and start comparable monitoring and biological surveys for a portion of both wetland types. These tasks emphasize building out monitoring capacity, standardizing data collection across a broader set of waterbodies, and enabling comparisons between natural systems and human-created features.

Coordination, outreach, and knowledge sharing are explicitly included as well. The Commission will continue to provide coordination and outreach and host the Pinelands Research Series, which functions as a venue for communicating scientific findings, supporting collaboration among researchers and practitioners, and keeping stakeholders informed about ongoing work in the Pinelands.

On the economic side, the agreement funds continuation of the Pinelands Long Term Economic Monitoring Program. Key outputs include completing and issuing the 2013 annual economic monitoring report and presenting findings to the Pinelands Commission and the Pinelands Municipal Council. The work plan then calls for collecting 2013 economic and census data in mid-2014, analyzing selected indicators, and producing map- and chart-based products that feed into the 2014 economic monitoring report, with findings to be reported in late 2014. The Commission is also directed to assess whether additional supplemental datasets are needed to better interpret current economic conditions in the Pinelands, to identify gaps that could require special studies, and to determine what resources are needed to obtain and analyze those data in future annual reports.

The award further supports policy-relevant economic analyses tied to Pinelands governance tools. The Commission will continue to review the status of the Pinelands Development Credit (PDC) program, including assessing the impacts of potential changes and conducting ad hoc analyses to support planned rulemaking, such as supply and demand updates. Another deliverable is providing content and support for an update on the economic impacts of the Commission's regulations from 2003 through 2012, intended for inclusion in the 4th Five Year Comprehensive Management Plan progress report scheduled for completion in 2014.

Finally, the notice identifies several special studies that are conditional on available funding and time. These include reexamining how municipalities split by the Pinelands boundary are handled in the economic monitoring methods (including whether GIS or additional datasets could improve upon the existing approach and whether ESRI estimates should continue to be used), revisiting the Municipal Fiscal Health special study to determine whether an update is needed and how fiscal stress should be measured, and initiating a broader programmatic review of the nearly 20-year-old long-term monitoring program itself to assess how well it has been evaluating the ecological and economic consequences of the CMP and what might need modernization.

Administratively, the announcement lists an estimated total funding amount of $284,100, with the award floor and ceiling both set at $284,100, reflecting that a single, fixed award amount had been predetermined for one expected award. The posting date is July 15, 2014, with an original and current closing date of July 20, 2014, and an archive date of July 21, 2014. Although the eligibility field references 501(c)(3) nonprofits, the text repeatedly clarifies that the award was already designated to the New Jersey Pinelands Commission, reinforcing that the announcement functions primarily as a transparency and documentation step rather than a competitive funding opportunity.

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