OARS funding Environmental Sustainability

EPA's Urban Waters Federal Partnership Program seeks to accelerate and coordinate projects that are critical to improving water quality and public health, restoring forest resources and fostering community stewardship in urban watersheds. A critical component of the UWFP is the Urban Waters Ambassador. The Urban Waters Ambassador locally coordinates with EPA Region 7 and a local steering committee to work with state, local and tribal governments, non-governmental organizations and other local partners/residents to help urban and metropolitan areas connect with their waterways and work to improve them.

The project proposes to survey the entire park for probable habitat, existing inhabited locations, condition and age structure of the current population, and to assess habitat condition and vulnerability to degradation. The study, joined with review of current peer-reviewed research, will provide the needed information to draft a management plan that will guide park actions where green salamander habitat integrity may be threatened. The report will also include habitat connectivity strategizing with partnering natural resource agencies and organizations to maintain wildlife corridors and greenways.

Through a cooperative effort, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Roswell Field Office and the Recipient will work together to maintain, improve, explore and study Fort Stanton Cave resources within BLM New Mexico public lands, as well as seek and use the skills, knowledge, and expertise in Recipient organization to plan, develop, and implement cave management and conservation efforts with BLM New Mexico. BLM benefited greatly from an existing Assistance Agreement that helps BLM manage this world-class cave system.

U.S. Geological Surveyâ¿¿s (USGS) Great Lakes Science Center is offering a funding opportunity for research to map non-native Phragmites australis in the Great Lakes basin. This research will support current adaptive management efforts as well as provide a useful metric of Phragmites control impact. Invasive species, and Phragmites in particular, have been explicitly identified as a high priority need in the GLRI Action Plan II, as well as many other regional, national, and binational initiatives.

The USGS Southwest Biological Science Center (SBSC) is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for research investigating the effects of climate change on the water balance and ecohydrological conditions of big-sagebrush ecosystems.

The Wetland and Aquatic Research Center (WARC) of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is offering a funding opportunity for research investigating the development, improvement, and portability of USGS-developed ecological modeling frameworks. This research should generally contribute to the coastal modeling, research, and restoration community.

The USGS is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for research into the relationship of the imperiled monarch butterfly to patch- and landscape-level characteristics. Prioritization of conservation effort is essential in todayâ¿¿s resource-limited environment. Given the immediate and serious need for conservation action, the fact that many entities are engaging in conservation, and the fact that the seeds needed for restoration of monarch habitat often have limited availability, it is important that conservation actions are undertaken strategically. This means that landscape-level considerations, at many spatial scales, must be included in the selection of areas to restore. The Monarch Conservation Science Partnership has identified regional and land-cover types to target. However, there is still little understanding of the importance of connectivity, patch size, edge effects, and surrounding land-cover categories on monarchsâ¿¿ ability to find a habitat patch, decisions to remain in a patch, and egg and larval survival. This research will address these gaps in our knowledge, and inform ongoing monarch conservation efforts by adding empirical findings to previous attempts to address these questions using movement models with limited basis in data. Additionally, the location of this study in the St. Croix WMD takes advantage of ongoing FWS habitat restoration work, and will be broadly applicable to the Upper Midwestern region that is key to the monarch population.

.S. Geological Surveyâ¿¿s (USGS) Great Lakes Science Center is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for research to explore the plant-microbe interactions in Phragmites australis, with a primary focus in the Great Lakes basin. In order to develop a microbe-based management approach for invasive plants, this research will study samples of Phragmites plants (or related species) grown or collected in collaboration with ongoing USGS studies to isolate, identify, and experiment with microbes (e.g., fungi, bacteria). The goals of this research are to improve our understanding of ways that fungal and bacterial endophytes affect Phragmites invisibility and provide targets for microbial control or enhancement. To better understand the underlying mechanisms of invasiveness in Phragmites and to identify potential control mechanisms, research in three general areas that build upon past and ongoing research: 1) comparing key characteristics of native vs. invasive Phragmites genotypes, 2) developing in vitro approaches for exploring Phragmites-microbial interactions, and 3) exploring the role of Phragmites litter as an endophyte inoculum source and contributor to soil microbial community structure and dynamics.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Alaska Science Center (ASC) is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for research to support an evaluation of how changes to foraging behavior may be influencing contaminant exposure of polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea. Specifically, the objective is to use adipose tissue samples to estimate polar bear diets and quantify exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The southern Beaufort Sea subpopulation of polar bears has experienced sea ice loss leading to an increasing trend of polar bears spending time on land during summer and possibly increased divergent foraging strategies with differential exposure to contaminants. A characterization of dietary influence on exposure may reveal whether changing behavior has the potential to mediate declines in polar bear health.

TEK is an interdisciplinary and collaborative field that gleans ecological information from traditionally associated tribes. This information will be used for active management of ecosystems, resulting in better stewardship. Tribes will be involved, including permission from the Tribal Councils for the project to proceed. To collect baseline information, this project has three research prongs.

This funding opportunity is a notice of intent to award a single source grant to Winston-Salem State University to help meet the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (Service) need for information and collaboration directed at high impact questions surrounding threats to fish and wildlife resources for which management and/or mitigation is required to maintain species at healthy, sustainable, desired levels. The Service must base its decisions on the best science available, in order to defend its regulatory decisions, biological opinions and species conservation recommendations to land managers. The Service uses a science-based, adaptive framework for setting and achieving broad-scale conservation objectives that strategically address the problems fish and wildlife will face in the future. This framework, called Strategic Habitat Conservation, is based on the principles of adaptive management and uses population and habitat data, ecological models, and focused monitoring and assessment efforts to develop and implement strategies that result in measurable fish and wildlife population outcomes. This process uses the best available scientific information to predict how fish and wildlife populations will respond to changes in the environment, thus enabling the Service to focus habitat conservation and other management activities where they will be most effective.

The Biological Anthropology Program supports multifaceted research to advance scientific knowledge of human biology and ecology, including understanding of our evolutionary history and mechanisms that have shaped human and nonhuman primate biological diversity. Supported research focuses on living and fossil forms of both human and nonhuman primates, addressing time scales ranging from the short-term to evolutionary, encompassing multiple levels of analysis (e.g., molecular, organismal, population, ecosystem), conducted in field, laboratory, captive, and computational research environments, and often incorporating interactions between human biology and culture. 

This request for proposal announces the availability of funds and solicits proposals under a competitive announcement to fund projects for the Florida Keys National Marine SanctuaryWater Quality Protection Program and the Southeast Florida Coral Reef Initiative. This announcement is an open competition for applicants to apply for funding on projects meeting the goals and objectives under these programs.

To further the conservation and management of natural resources managed by the BLM through the application of land restoration techniques, assessment and monitoring. Assist BLM California State botanist with strategic seed collections that complement the standard Seeds of Success program by matching experienced botanists familiar with seed collection and native plant propagation with BLM district and Field personnel to increase collection quality, efficiency and consistency.Provide support in helping to identify plant materials that lend themselves to successful propagation and providing plant material production skills. Provide genetically appropriate seed and plant material for seed increase and planting at restoration sites.

The program supports on-the-ground restoration projects and applied science aimed at enhancing the age and structural diversity of forests in the region; improving the quality of habitat in river and stream systems, especially for eastern brook trout, eastern hellbender, and threatened and endangered freshwater mussels and their host species; and restoring the integrity and complexity of streamside forests, especially those providing habitat for Louisiana water thrush and eastern brook trout.

Subtitle C of the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-11) (Act) authorized the Wolf-Livestock Demonstration Project Grant Program with two purposes: 1) prevention - grant dollars to assist livestock producers in undertaking proactive, nonlethal activities to reduce the risk of livestock loss due to predation by wolves; and 2) compensation - grant dollars to reimburse livestock producers for livestock losses due to such predation. Included in the authorization language was direction that the program be established as a grant program to provide funding to States and tribes, that the Federal cost-share not exceed 50 percent, and that funds be expended equally between the two purposes. The Service is initiating a competitive program to States and tribes in accordance with P.L. 111-11. States and tribes may compete for prevention or compensation grants. Grant amounts will be contingent upon the quality and number of proposals received.

The National Park Service (NPS) creates resource management records in the course of daily business which are considered permanent. These records incorporate the long history of assembling data on and managing cultural and natural resources during the past century. The need to utilize information in these inaccessible records grows daily.

The purpose of this announcement is to support the implementation of NEST through operations of the NEST CC toward sustainable operations for the future  to coincide with the stated purposes and goals listed in Section IV.H of the draft Medical Device User Fee Act Performance Goals and Procedures, Fiscal Years 2018 Through 2022 letter (MDUFA IV Commitment Letter, Available at https://www.fda.gov/downloads/ForIndustry/UserFees/MedicalDeviceUserFee/UCM526395.pdf

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) encourages applications for administrative supplements from the Children's Health Exposure Analysis Resource (CHEAR) grantees in order to support the offering of CHEAR analytical services to meet the needs of the NIH Environmental influences on Children's Health Outcomes (ECHO) program. 

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) encourages applications for administrative supplements from the Children's Health Exposure Analysis Resource (CHEAR) grantees in order to support the offering of CHEAR analytical services to meet the needs of the NIH Environmental influences on Children's Health Outcomes (ECHO) program.