Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU)

The summary for the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) grant is detailed below. This summary states who is eligible for the grant, how much grant money will be awarded, current and past deadlines, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers, and a sampling of similar government grants. Verify the accuracy of the data FederalGrants.com provides by visiting the webpage noted in the Link to Full Announcement section or by contacting the appropriate person listed as the Grant Announcement Contact. If any section is incomplete, please visit the website for the Geological Survey, which is the U.S. government agency offering this grant.

Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU): The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is requested to provide technical assistance and expertise to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Office of Research and Developments (ORD) National Ecological Effects Research Laboratory (NERL) in Duluth, Minnesota and EPA Region 8 in Denver, Colorado through a USGS staff person located in the EPA Region 8 Ecosystems Protection Program of the Office of Ecosystems Protection and Remediation. Technical assistance will specifically support both ORDs and the Regions efforts in EPAs Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP). USGS will provide technical support and professional services to assist EPA ORD and Region 8 in carrying out their goals and objectives in EMAP to assess the ecological condition of streams in the region and to provide technology transfer on periphyton taxonomy, monitoring, and assessment methods to state and tribal partners. In particular, support and services activities are focused on the development and use of diatoms in ecological assessments, including 1) the development of web-based tools for taxonomic and ecological interpretation of diatom species and 2) the development and analysis of periphyton indicators for assessment of ecological stream condition, including contribution to EMAP assessment reports on ecological stream condition. This funding opportunity is for computer programming, database population, and testing to expand on a previous project, Antarctic Freshwater Diatoms (http://huey.colorado.edu/diatoms/). This announcement is for proposals to develop a technologically novel database that integrates diatom taxonomy, nomenclature, reference images, maps, access to samples, and species count data for diatoms in the EPA Western EMAP pilot. This proposed one year award to work with USGS personnel to: a) Develop of a web resource that integrates taxonomic and ecological diatom data. The objective of the web resource is to promote internally consistent and publicly accessible taxonomic data in support of federal and state compliance with the Clean Water Act. b) Conduct basic taxonomic and autecological research on a group of diatom taxa (initially, 150 species). Of the approximately 800 diatom species in western EMAP, a priority list of the 150 most valuable indicator taxa will be included in this version of the web resource. Each species webpage will provide: . microscope image . species morphologic range . original descriptions . nomenclatural transfers . geographic distribution . ecological tolerances