OARS funding Conservation

Support innovative or scalable methods or approaches to reduce climate risk at the municipal and community level.To support the implemetation of priority adaptation strategies in vulnerable communities

The Science of Science & Innovation Policy (SciSIP) program supports research designed to advance the scientific basis of science and innovation policy. Research funded by the program thus develops, improves and expands models, analytical tools, data and metrics that can be applied in the science policy decision making process.

The goal of the National Integrated Water Quality Program (NIWQP) is to contribute to the improvement of the quality of surface water and groundwater resources through research, education, and extension activities. Projects funded through this program will work to solve water resource problems by advancing and disseminating the knowledge base available to agricultural, rural, and urbanizing communities. Funded projects should lead to science-based decision making and management practices that improve the quality of the Nations surface water and groundwater resources in agricultural, rural, and urbanizing watersheds.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Chesapeake Bay Program Office (CBPO) is announcing a Request for Proposals (RFP) for applicants to provide the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) non-federal partners with support for further integrating citizen-based and nontraditional environmental monitoring programs into the CBP partnership's existing monitoring networks.

The questions that follow each priority listed below are provided as examples and do not represent a comprehensive list: Tier 1: 1. Priority 1: Understanding the nature and dynamics of remnant bat populations in WNS affected areas. Are survival and recruitment consistent across the affected area within species? What factors influence host resilience and tolerance? 2.P riority 2: Understanding the nature and dynamics of Pd infectivity and virulence factors. Why and how is Pd pathogenic? How does Pd differ physiologically and genomically from congeneric and other cave-associated fungal species? Tier 2: 3. Priority 3: Other important research. (An open category) Control of Pd: chemical and or biological agents for possible treatment of bats and or their environments. Examination of the ecological and economic impacts of WNS.

This fall, OARS will host a series of brown-bag workshops on navigating the NSF proposal process.  Workshops will be held select Tuesdays from noon to 1:00pm in Pearson 208.  You are welcome to attend any or all of the sessions.  Click through for dates and registration information.

NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), National Sea Grant College Program invites applications to establish a Sea Grant College for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania beginning in FY 2015. Applicants should provide a four-year plan for an institutional program that will be part of the larger National Sea Grant network, a partnership between the federal government and universities to conduct integrated research, education and outreach in fields related to ocean, coastal and Great Lakes resources.

This is a single source opportunity to NatureServe to facilitate the work of the North American Committee on Wilderness and Protected areas, and to enable the National Wildlife Refuge System to better protect the resiliency of its wilderness and other protected lands and waters.

The MacroSystems Biology: Research on Biological Systems at Regional to Continental Scales will support quantitative, interdisciplinary, systems-oriented research on biosphere processes and their complex interactions with climate, land use, and invasive species at regional to continental scales as well as planning, training, and development activities to enable groups to conduct MacroSystems Biology Research.

Emphasis is placed on novel collaborations that bring together scientists preferably from different disciplines (e.g. from chemistry, physics, computer science, engineering) to focus on problems in the life sciences. The research teams must be international. The principal applicant must be from one of the eligible countries. However, other participating scientists and laboratories may be situated anywhere in the world.

All of comparative biology depends on knowledge of the evolutionary relationships (phylogeny) of living and extinct organisms. In addition, understanding biodiversity and how it changes over time is only possible when Earth's diversity is organized into a phylogenetic framework. The goals of the Genealogy of Life (GoLife) program are to resolve the phylogenetic history of life and to integrate this genealogical architecture with underlying organismal data. The ultimate vision of this program is an open access, universal Genealogy of Life that will provide the comparative framework necessary for testing questions in systematics, evolutionary biology, ecology, and other fields. A further strategic integration of this genealogy of life with data layers from genomic, phenotypic, spatial, ecological and temporal data will produce a grand synthesis of biodiversity and evolutionary sciences. The resulting knowledge infrastructure will enable synthetic research on biological dynamics throughout the history of life on Earth, within current ecosystems, and for predictive modeling of the future evolution of life.Projects submitted to this program should emphasize increased efficiency in contributing to a complete Genealogy of Life and integration of various types of organismal data with phylogenies.This program also seeks to broadly train next generation, integrative phylogenetic biologists, creating the human resource infrastructure and workforce needed to tackle emerging research questions in comparative biology. Projects should train students for diverse careers by exposing them to the multidisciplinary areas of research within the proposal.

The goal of the Dimensions of Biodiversity campaign is to transform, by 2020, how we describe and understand the scope and role of life on Earth. The campaign promotes novel, integrated approaches to identify and understand the evolutionary and ecological significance of biodiversity amidst the changing environment of the present day and in the geologic past.This campaign seeks to characterize biodiversity on Earth by using integrative, innovative approaches to fill the most substantial gaps in our understanding of the diversity of life on Earth. It takes a broad view of biodiversity, and currently focuses on the integration of genetic, taxonomic/phylogenetic, and functional dimensions of biodiversity. Successful proposals should integrate these three dimensions to understand interactions and feedbacks among them. While this focus complements several core NSF programs, it differs by requiring that multiple dimensions of biodiversity be addressed simultaneously, in innovative or novel ways, to understand their synergistic roles in critical ecological and evolutionary processes.

The Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) supports fundamental research on populations, species, communities, and ecosystems. Scientific emphases range across many evolutionary and ecological patterns and processes at all spatial and temporal scales. Areas of research include biodiversity, phylogenetic systematics, molecular evolution, life history evolution, natural selection, ecology, biogeography, ecosystem structure, function and services, conservation biology, global change, and biogeochemical cycles. Research on organismal origins, functions, relationships, interactions, and evolutionary history may incorporate field, laboratory, or collection-based approaches; observational or manipulative experiments; synthesis activities; as well as theoretical approaches involving analytical, statistical, or computational modeling.

The Biological Oceanography Program supports research in marine ecology broadly defined: relationships among aquatic organisms and their interactions with the environments of the oceans or Great Lakes. Projects submitted to the program for consideration are often interdisciplinary efforts that may include participation by other OCE Programs. 

This announcement seeks out technologies and methodologies to reduce environmental impacts from current and past Navy operations, and applies to Navy installations worldwide. NAVFAC EXWC is interested in environmental technologies and methodologies that are either new, innovative, advance the state-of-the-art, or increase knowledge or understanding of a technology or methodology.

Program Goal: Strengthen the capacity of Latin American and Caribbean individuals and institutions to manage and conserve species, habitats, and ecological processes. Program Objective: Support projects that address one or more of the following three focal areas: (i) threatened landscapes, (ii) threatened species, and (iii) regional training programs. In fiscal year 2014, the Wildlife Without Borders-Latin America and Caribbean Program (WWB-LAC) seeks proposals that address the underlying human dimensions of species and ecosystem conservation in the following regions: * Central America * Tropical Andes (western Amazon) * Regional Caribbean projects (defined as two or more countries or islands) Projects should take place in the above regions of Latin America or the Caribbean. (Please note that projects in Mexico are administered through the Wildlife Without Borders - Mexico Program.)

This program is a continuation of the Plant Genome Research Program (PGRP) that began in FY 1998 as part of the National Plant Genome Initiative (NPGI). Since the inception of the NPGI and the PGRP, there has been a tremendous increase in the availability of functional genomics tools and sequence resources for use in the study of key crop plants and their models. Proposals are welcomed that build on these resources to develop conceptually new and different ideas and strategies to address grand challenge questions in plants of economic importance on a genome-wide scale. There is also a critical need for the development of novel and creative tools to facilitate new experimental approaches or new ways of analyzing genomic data. Especially encouraged are proposals that provide strong and novel training opportunities integral to the research plan and particularly across disciplines that include, but are not limited to, plant physiology, quantitative genetics, biochemistry, bioinformatics and engineering.Activities in four focus areas will be supported in FY 2014: (1) Genomics-empowered plant research to tackle fundamental questions in plant sciences on a genome-wide scale; (2) Development of tools and resources for plant genome research including novel technologies and analysis tools to enable discovery; (3) Mid-Career Investigator Awards in Plant Genome Research (MCA-PGR) to increase participation of investigators trained primarily in fields other than plant genomics; and, (4) Advancing Basic Research in Economically Important Crop Plants (ABR-PG) to develop sequence resources that are critically needed to enable basic research resources in crop plants.

CCOM's Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program is designed to create research experiences for undergraduate students who are interested in pursuing graduate work. SURF is aimed primarily at students who are working toward a degree in science, engineering, or math and are completing their junior year.

The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), an agency under the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), is announcing availability of Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG) to stimulate the development and adoption of innovative conservation approaches and technologies. Applications will be accepted from all 50 States, the District of Columbia, the Caribbean Area (Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands), and the Pacific Islands Area (Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands). NRCS anticipates that the amount available for support of this program in FY 2014 will be up to $15 million. Applications are requested from eligible governmental or non-governmental organizations or individuals for competitive consideration of grant awards for projects between 1 and 3 years in duration.

This FOA encourages Research Conference Grant (R13) applications from institutions and organizations that propose to develop interdisciplinary research teams. Teams must include investigators from the social and/or behavioral sciences, and may include the life and/or physical sciences.  The goal is to broaden the scope of investigation into scientific problems, yield fresh and possibly unexpected insights, and increase the sophistication of theoretical, methodological, and analytical approaches by integrating the analytical strengths of two or more disparate scientific disciplines while addressing gaps in terminology, approach, and methodology.  This program will allow investigators from multiple disciplines to hold meetings in order to provide the foundation for developing interdisciplinary research projects.