Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Great Plains CESU | G19AS00085

Opportunity Information: Apply for G19AS00085

This grant opportunity, titled "Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Great Plains CESU" (Funding Opportunity Number G19AS00085), was released by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) within the Department of the Interior. It is a discretionary science and technology research and development opportunity offered as a cooperative agreement, meaning the project would be carried out with substantial involvement and collaboration from the USGS rather than being a hands-off award. The USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center is the sponsoring office, and it is specifically seeking work that supports and advances national land monitoring capabilities built around the Landsat satellite record.

The core purpose of the award is to fund research that develops practical strategies to detect and monitor land change using Landsat data. The emphasis is on approaches that can document both natural change (such as wildfire recovery, flooding impacts, drought-driven vegetation shifts, or other ecological dynamics) and human-driven change (such as urban expansion, agricultural conversion, energy development, logging, or infrastructure growth). While the applicant may focus on a particular region or case study, the USGS is clear that the methods and results should be scalable and transferable so they can ultimately support land change monitoring across the entire United States. In other words, a regional demonstration is acceptable, but the expectation is that the outcome is not a one-off local product; it should be a strategy that could be generalized and used nationally.

The scientific and operational context for this work is the USGS EROS Center's role as a national hub for remotely sensed data management, systems development, and land-change science under the USGS Land Resources Mission. EROS has a long history of producing land cover and land change science from local to global scales and is currently modernizing its land cover monitoring capabilities through an initiative referenced here as LCMAP #191, which stands for Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection. That initiative aims to enable consistent detection of land change and characterization of land cover at any point in the Landsat archive, which spans roughly 46 years. The grant is therefore positioned as applied research that helps strengthen the methods, workflows, and analytical strategies that feed into an operational land change monitoring system based on the long-term Landsat record.

In terms of basic funding parameters, the opportunity listed an award ceiling of $70,000 with an expectation of making a single award. It was created on July 8, 2019, with an original closing date of July 22, 2019. The CFDA number associated with the program is 15.808. Eligibility is restricted to partners within the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit network, specifically under the Great Plains CESU, with the eligibility field indicating "Others" and directing applicants to additional eligibility text for clarification. Overall, the opportunity is best understood as a targeted, partner-based research effort to improve how Landsat time series data are used to detect, attribute, and monitor land changes in ways that support nationwide USGS land monitoring modernization efforts.

• The Department of the Interior, U. S. Geological Survey in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Great Plains CESU" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.808.
• This funding opportunity was created on Jul 08, 2019.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jul 22, 2019. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $70,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

Apply for G19AS00085

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: