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The Nation faces an increasing set of water resource challenges. Aging infrastructure, rapid population growth, depletion of groundwater resources, impaired water quality associated with particular land uses and land covers, water needed for human and environmental uses, and climate variability and change all play a role in determining the amount of fresh water available at any given place and time. Water shortages and water-use conflicts have become more commonplace in many areas of the United States, even in normal water years. As competition for water resources grows-for crop irrigation, growing cities and communities, energy production, and the environment-the need for information and tools to aid water resource managers also grows. Water issues and challenges are increasing across the Nation, but particularly in the West, due to prolonged drought. These water issues are exacerbating the challenges facing traditional water management approaches which by themselves no longer meet today's needs. The U.S. Department of the Interior's (Department) WaterSMART (Sustain and Manage America's Resources for Tomorrow) Program establishes a framework to provide Federal leadership and assistance on the efficient use of water, integrating water and energy policies to support the sustainable use of all natural resources, and coordinating the water conservation activities of various Department bureaus and offices. Through the WaterSMART Program, the Department is working to achieve a sustainable water management strategy to meet the Nation's water needs.

DE-FOA-0002165: Notice of Request for Information (RFI) on Water Security Grand Challenge Resource Recovery Prize The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) invites public comment providing information and feedback on the design of a potential prize competition with a goal of increasing resource recovery from municipal wastewater treatment plants across the United States, and in so doing, lower the ultimate cost of treatment by extracting additional value from the wastewater (i.e., improve energy efficiency). Through this potential prize, DOE would seek novel, systems-based solutions from multidisciplinary teams to implement resource recovery at small-to-medium-sized wastewater treatment plants. Specifically, the intent is to encourage teams of wastewater treatment plants, engineering and design firms, technology developers, resource customers (e.g., farmers, electric and gas utilities), and others to develop holistic community and/or watershed-based resource recovery plans for their respective wastewater treatment systems. Input from this RFI may be used to further develop the competition objectives, rules, metrics, and incentives.

From rangeland management to protection of cultural resources; fire suppression to energy development; trails and travel management to National Conservation Lands, the BLM values public involvement and a collaborative environment. When we facilitate activities and uses of the public lands, they are designed, permitted, and monitored with the goal of retaining or returning the land to a healthy condition once the use or activity ends. Our objective is to provide opportunities for youth (ages 16-30 years of age) to engage in BLM cultural and natural resource conservation-related projects and to increase public awareness and appreciation of those resources and recreational resource values found on public lands. These projects will provide participants with a mix of work experience, education, training, community involvement and support services, as well as the opportunity to develop citizenship values and skills through service to their community and the United States. As the young men and women gain experience in natural and cultural resource management, they will also develop an appreciation for public lands and learn about conservation-related career fields

This project represents an opportunity to enter into a cooperative agreement for cultural resources outreach, education and training to further effective cultural resource management on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Project lands. Stewardship of historic and cultural resources can be achieved by educating students, Corps staff, and public and private landowners holding outgrant leases, easements or licenses on USACE lands. A cooperative agreement with an educational institution will provide educational benefits and awareness to college students, interns, volunteers, neighbors, frequent users, the general public and future stewards of the sites, and provide benefits to the community of which these USACE sites are a part. The program would provide job training, education, and early career development for college-level students in archaeology, anthropology, and natural / cultural resource management. Students will learn appropriate survey and monitoring methods, field techniques, archival research, regulations and policy, and the latest technology to document and analyze cultural sites and historic properties.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service, Region 7 intends to award a single source financial assistance agreement as authorized by 505 DM 2.14 (B) to the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. This notice is not a request for proposals and the Government does not intend to accept proposals. This financial assistance opportunity is being issued under the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) Network: (http://www.cesu.psu.edu/materials/partners.htm). The CESU network provides research, technical assistance, and education to federal land management, environmental, and research agencies and their partners. The partners serve the biological, physical, social, cultural, and engineering disciplines needed to address natural and cultural resource management issues at multiple scales and in an ecosystem context. The purpose of this agreement is to provide support and assistance to University of Alaska Fairbanks to conduct research on the history of land use and environmental conditions on Selawik Refuge in the early to mid 20th century. This will include information on traditional family settlements, historic resource distribution and abundance, muskrat hunting and trading, and other key subsistence activities. Both oral history interviews with northwest Alaska elders and archival materials research at University of Alaska Fairbanks and other repositories will be used in this project. Oral histories and archival materials can shed light on historic environmental conditions, critical habitat (locations of seasonal family settlements were in key resource areas), changes in land use and resource distribution, and important areas for cultural resources.

NRCS is the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) conservation agency working with farmers, ranchers, and private forest landowners nationwide to identify and address natural resource objectives in balance with operational goals in order to benefit soil, water, wildlife, and related natural resources locally, regionally, and nationally. NRCS works in partnership with other entities to accelerate getting conservation on the ground. Through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP), NRCS seeks to co-invest with partners in innovative, workable, and cost-effective approaches to benefit farming, ranching, and forest operations, local economies, and the communities and resources in a watershed or other geographic area. RCPP partners develop project applications, as described in this notice, to address specific natural resource objectives in a proposed area or region.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to provide regional access for cryoelectron microscopy (cryoEM) laboratories to state-of-the-art data collection capabilities. NIGMS will support consortia of established and early stage investigator laboratories whose research has an established specialization in and dependence on cryoEM. These laboratories will coordinate with each other to share facilities and resources for direct electron detection. Consortia will consist of a host institution which already has a modern high-performing cryoEM installation and proven capabilities for high-resolution data collection, partnered with regional participating institutions. A consortium will support surplus capacity for cryoEM data collection (infrastructure and services) at the host institution and make it available as a resource for the participating regional institutions. Projects will support access for cryoEM laboratories at participating institutions to resources and services at host sites. Projects will (a) contribute to the fixed costs of maintaining the host facility and extend services in proportion to the resources dedicated to the regional users and (b) support access to the facility by the regional laboratories. The host institution need not already have an electron detector; this FOA can help fund acquisition of direct detection equipment. Support is limited to enabling the participating cryoEM laboratories to collect data and perform the initial stages of processing raw images, and does not include other research activities. Consortia will consist of a minimum of 3-5 institutions; award budgets will depend on the number and data collection needs of the regional participating cryoEM laboratories. This initiative is not intended to support service centers of the traditional type in which the host laboratory performs the cryoEM analysis for non-specialist collaborators.

The Fox River Green Bay Natural Resource Trustees restore natural resources injured by the release of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the Lower Fox River and Green Bay, WI. The Trustees allocate funding, provided by settlement dollars from responsible parties, to restoration projects that fulfill the natural resource objectives of the 2003 Joint Restoration Plan and Environmental Assessment for The Lower Fox River and Green Bay Area and the 2016 Restoration Plan Update under the authority of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act. A copy of the Restoration Plan and Update can be found at foxrivernrda.org or provided by the agency contact by request. This is not a conventional grants program, in that it does not solicit for projects through a formal request for proposals on Grants.gov; instead, project idea forms are developed strategically in coordination with the Trustee Council. Projects that are funded through the NRDA program must be within the PCB affected area and must replace, restore, or acquire the equivalent of natural resources injured by the release of PCBs. Projects undergo a selection process based on the criteria outlined in the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO). Following the review process, if a project is selected a grant will be awarded. The Service will also award single source grant agreements based on the criteria outlined in Section VI without competition under justification 505DM 2.14.B.4 as appropriate. This award will utilize grants and cooperative agreements; in the situation where a cooperative agreement is awarded the Service will be substantially involved in the project.

The Cultural and Paleontological Resources Management Programs are responsible for managing and preserving these fragile, nonrenewable scientific resources that are an important component of America's natural heritage. These heritage resources are managed for educational, scientific, cultural, and recreational purposes. In addition, the cultural resources program is responsible for engaging with Native American communities and ensuring accountability for the proper care of museum objects that are related to the tribes cultural patrimony.

Humanity depends upon the Earth's physical resources and natural systems for food, energy, and water (FEW). However, both the physical resources and the FEW systems are under increasing stress. It is becoming imperative that we determine how society can best integrate social, ecological, physical and built environments to provide for growing demand for food, energy and water in the short term while also maintaining appropriate ecosystem services for the future. Known stressors in FEW systems include governance challenges, population growth and migration, land use change, climate variability, and uneven resource distribution. The interconnections and interdependencies associated with the FEW Nexus pose research grand challenges. To meet these grand challenges, there is a critical need for research that enables new means of adapting societal use of FEW systems. The INFEWS program seeks to support research that conceptualizes FEW systems broadly and inclusively, incorporating social and behavioral processes (such as decision making and governance), physical processes (such as built infrastructure and new technologies for more efficient resource utilization), natural processes (such as biogeochemical and hydrologic cycles), biological processes (such as agroecosystem structure and productivity), and cyber-components (such as sensing, networking, computation and visualization for decision-making and assessment). Investigations of these complex systems may produce discoveries that cannot emerge from research on food or energy or water systems alone. It is the synergy among these components in the context of sustainability that will open innovative science and engineering pathways to produce new knowledge, novel technologies, and innovative predictive capabilities.

This project will seek to produce geospatial products and corresponding reports/guidebooks to improve riparian-wetland resource management, including but not limited to the following general statewide needs: (1) New geospatial layers that represent riparian-wetland characteristics. Now that riparian-wetland mapping is nearly complete for most areas throughout the state, individual layers that represent unique riparian-wetland characteristics will maximize the utility of those efforts because the attributes that need to be considered for a project depend on the proposed actions and facilitating access to the various geospatial representations will enable resource specialists to analyze key features at multiple scales and thereby improve their ability to develop holistic management plans that include the physical, biological, and ecological components of riparian-wetland management. New geospatial layers should help groups across the state to develop Resource & Drought Management Plans, identify desired resource values (fisheries, water quality, wildlife, etc.), and describe the corresponding Affected Environment and Environmental Consequences sections of NEPA documents (or MEPA documents associated with Montana State authorizations under the Montana Environmental Policy Act). Examples of potential geospatial layers include: Risk/Vulnerability rating for livestock grazing during drought

This program promotes cooperative partnerships and provides public outreach, public awareness, resource investigation and protection, on the ground knowledge of the development and implementation of natural resource programs and services. This funding opportunity will provided much needed critical management of public lands resource. With the technical support of a partnership organization, project level activities such as on the ground monitoring/ investigations for over 189,000 acres of recreation resource, 577,504 acres of Wilderness Study Areas and an estimated 7 million acres of wilderness characteristic inventory will provide BLM with needed data to better service to the public need. The BLM needs to meet our ongoing inventorying for recreational/ wilderness data shortage, visitor use data, GIS support and public outreach.

Section 104g of the Water Resources Research Act of 1984 requires that this competitive grant program focus on water problems and issues of a regional or interstate nature beyond those of concern only to a single State and which relate to specific program priorities identified jointly by the Secretary of the Interior and the water resources research institutes. Objectives of this program also include the following A. Promote collaboration between the USGS and university scientists in research on significant national and regional water resources issues. Proposals exhibiting substantial collaboration between the USGS and the applicant are encouraged and will receive extra weight in the evaluation and selection process. Collaborative proposals should describe in detail the respective roles of the USGS and the applicant in the proposed work. Potential applicants seeking collaborative opportunities are encouraged to contact USGS Water Science Center Directors.

The National Sea Grant College Program was enacted by U.S. Congress in 1966 (amended in 2008, Public Law 110-394) to support leveraged federal and state partnership that harness the intellectual capacity of the nation's universities and research institutions to solve problems and generate opportunities in coastal communities. The 2019 NMFS-Sea Grant Fellowship Program in Marine Resource Economics expects to award one new Ph.D. Fellowship each year to students who are interested in careers related to the development and implementation of quantitative methods for assessing the economics of the conservation and management of living marine resources. This fellowship can provide support for up to three years. Fellows will work on thesis problems of public interest and relevance to National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) under the guidance of NMFS mentors at participating NMFS Science Centers or Offices. The NMFS-Sea Grant Fellowship in Marine Resource Economics meets NOAA's Healthy Oceans goal of "Marine fisheries, habitats, biodiversity sustained with healthy and productive ecosystems." The expected annual award per Fellow will be $48,000 (Federal plus matching funds), jointly funded by NOAA Fisheries and Sea Grant.

The Fox River/Green Bay Natural Resource Trustees restore natural resources injured by the release of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the Lower Fox River and Green Bay, WI. The Trustees allocate funding, provided by settlement dollars from responsible parties, to restoration projects that fulfill the natural resource objectives of the 2003 Joint Restoration Plan and Environmental Assessment for The Lower Fox River and Green Bay Area and the 2016 Restoration Plan Update under the authority of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act. The Lower Fox River/Green Bay NRDA is not a conventional grants program, in that it does not solicit for projects through a formal request for proposals on Grants.gov; instead project idea forms are developed strategically in coordination with the Trustee Council. Following the review process, if a project is selected it will be issued through the Service as a single source grant agreement without competition under justification 505DM 2.14.B.4. Applicants seeking funding under this program should review the requirements and selection criteria and contact the restoration coordinator to discuss their project concept prior to submitting an application for funding.

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 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 NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office (NCBO) provides technical assistance in (1) identifying science-based management options for restoration and protection of living resources and their habitats; (2) monitoring and assessing the status of living resources and their habitats; and, (3) evaluating the effectiveness of management plan implementation. For FY 2018, it is anticipated that up to approximately $500,000 could be made available for projects that address funding priorities identified in the Program Priority Section (I.B.) NCBO encourages projects that are collaborative, interdisciplinary, and will leverage other resources. Preference will be given to projects with clear management application. An informational webinar about the FY 2018 Chesapeake Bay Fisheries Research Program funding announcement will be held on March 2, 2018 at 1:00 PM Eastern Time. To register for the webinar, visit the "Hot Topic" article about this grant announcement on the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office Homepage: http://go.usa.gov/xKth5

The objectives of this Funding Opportunity Announcement are to solicit and competitively seek research applications to accelerate the development and application of technologies for enhancing the recovery of petroleum from both onshore conventional and unconventional reservoirs through the injection of chemical, miscible, or thermal fluids. It should be noted that applications for developing and testing technologies, methods and practices for enhancing oil recovery over and above current productions from unconventional reservoirs that do not involve the injection of enhanced oil recovery fluids (e.g. improving fracturing treatments, enhanced well completion design) are solicited in a separate Funding Opportunity Announcement, titled DE-FOA-0001990, Advanced Technologies for Recovery of Unconventional Oil and Gas Resources. The two Areas of Interest for this Funding Opportunity Announcement are Area of Interest 1 Enhanced Oil Recovery Technologies for Conventional Resources Area of Interest 2 Enhanced Oil Recovery Technologies for Unconventional Resources

Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument (FLFO) staff will work together with Northern Arizona University (NAU) personnel, and local neighbor stakeholders on the design and layout of twenty-seven (27) outdoor interpretive waysides along the monumentâ¿¿s trails to replace outdated trail exhibits. Existing wayside exhibit panels at the beginning of the trails lack important safety, orientation, and resource protection information. New waysides will provide critical resource protection messages and discourage visitors from vandalizing and/or stealing petrified wood and other fossils, and will facilitate orientation; encourage safe recreation (visitor health and safety) and provide new opportunities for visitor enjoyment and understanding of the parkâ¿¿s resources.