Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Rocky Mountain CESU | G18AS00039

Opportunity Information: Apply for G18AS00039

The Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Rocky Mountain CESU grant opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number G18AS00039) is a discretionary, science-and-technology focused cooperative agreement offered by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) within the Department of the Interior. It was released by the USGS Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center (NOROCK) and is aimed at supporting applied statistical analysis and related research tied directly to natural resource inventory and monitoring efforts. The project emphasis is on turning existing and newly collected monitoring datasets into defensible analyses, decision-relevant products, and publishable science that can be used by land and wildlife managers.

The core work centers on statistical analyses and research supporting multiple high-priority ecological topics and geographies. A major focus area is whitebark pine in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which implies work such as trend analysis, drivers of change, occupancy or abundance modeling, and other approaches that help interpret monitoring data for a species and habitat of high conservation concern. Another major emphasis is submerged aquatic vegetation, along with development of state-and-transition models intended to inform management actions on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuges in the Intermountain West. This points to analytical and modeling tasks that translate monitoring information into clear management pathways, such as identifying ecological states, transitions driven by stressors or interventions, and the likely outcomes of different management strategies. The opportunity also highlights bat data across North America, suggesting broad-scale monitoring analyses that may involve multi-region datasets, methods to address detection probability, and synthesis across differing monitoring designs. Finally, it includes upland vegetation in sagebrush steppe ecosystems, which often requires community or functional group analyses, change detection over time, and interpretation in the context of disturbance, restoration, and habitat management.

A key expectation is the production of usable, well-documented analytical code that others can run and adapt. The opportunity explicitly prefers workflows built with RMarkdown and Shiny, signaling that deliverables are not limited to static reports. Instead, applicants are expected to create reproducible analysis documents (RMarkdown) and potentially interactive tools or dashboards (RShiny) that help scientists and managers explore results, update analyses as new data arrive, and apply the work operationally. In practical terms, the code deliverable is meant to be a tangible product that improves transparency, repeatability, and long-term utility of the analyses beyond the life of the award.

In addition to analytical products and code, the project is expected to produce manuscripts describing the research and submit them to professional peer-reviewed journals. That requirement indicates the work is intended to meet scientific publication standards, including clear methods, documented assumptions, appropriate statistical rigor, and interpretable results that contribute to the broader scientific literature while still meeting management needs.

From an administrative standpoint, this opportunity was created May 16, 2018, with an original closing date of May 30, 2018. It anticipated a single award (Expected Awards: 1) with an award ceiling of $71,366. The funding mechanism is a cooperative agreement, which typically implies substantial involvement by the federal agency during the project, such as collaboration on scope, data access, review of deliverables, and coordination to ensure products align with agency monitoring objectives.

Eligibility is listed broadly as "Others," with additional clarification referenced in the opportunity’s eligibility text field. Because the award is associated with the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) network, applicants commonly include CESU-affiliated institutions or partners, and eligibility often depends on the specific CESU agreement terms and partner status referenced in the full announcement.

Overall, the opportunity is best described as a targeted applied research and analytics project: take priority monitoring datasets (whitebark pine, submerged aquatic vegetation and refuge state-transition dynamics, bats, and sagebrush steppe upland vegetation), apply strong statistical and modeling approaches, package the work into reproducible and user-friendly R-based tools, and convert the resulting science into peer-reviewed publications and management-relevant products.

• 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, Rocky Mountain 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 May 16, 2018.
• Applicants must submit their applications by May 30, 2018. (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 $71,366.00 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 G18AS00039

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