Vegetation and Aquatic Macroinvertebrate | P17AS00235

Opportunity Information: Apply for P17AS00235

The Vegetation and Aquatic Macroinvertebrate grant opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number P17AS00235) is a National Park Service discretionary funding announcement under the U.S. Department of the Interior, offered as a cooperative agreement. The work is centered in Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GRSM) and focuses on hands-on natural resource monitoring and inventory efforts that are already underway in the park. In practical terms, the opportunity supports field-based science and the associated data workflow needed to help the park track ecosystem conditions, detect change over time, and make better-informed management decisions.

The project scope combines field work, data collection, and data management across several established natural resource initiatives. These include long-term forest plot monitoring (revisiting permanent or semi-permanent forest plots to measure vegetation and forest condition over time), vegetation mapping accuracy assessment (ground-truthing and evaluating how well vegetation maps match real on-the-ground conditions), wetlands inventory (locating, describing, and documenting wetland resources), aquatic macroinvertebrate monitoring (sampling stream or aquatic habitats for insect larvae and other small organisms that are widely used as indicators of water quality and aquatic ecosystem health), and rare plant monitoring (surveying known populations and/or searching for sensitive species to assess status and threats). Because these efforts are ongoing, the cooperative agreement structure suggests close coordination with NPS staff and alignment with park protocols, methods, and data standards.

A key emphasis of the opportunity is that the information collected is meant to be immediately useful for park management. Vegetation and aquatic macroinvertebrate data are commonly used to evaluate habitat condition, identify stressors, support conservation planning, and prioritize protection or restoration actions. At the same time, the announcement notes that the resulting datasets will also serve a broader audience beyond park managers, including the scientific community, park partners, educators, and the public. That signals an expectation that the work will produce well-documented, shareable outputs such as clean datasets, metadata, and possibly summary products that can be interpreted by non-specialists, consistent with NPS goals around transparency and resource stewardship.

Eligibility is limited primarily to nonprofit organizations with IRS 501(c)(3) status (excluding institutions of higher education), along with additional eligible entities referenced as "Others" depending on the clarification in the full notice. The award ceiling listed is $32,940, indicating a relatively small, targeted project budget that is typical for a focused field season of monitoring support, technician time, travel, supplies, and data management tasks. The opportunity was created on May 9, 2017, with an original closing date of May 15, 2017, reflecting a short application window in the posted announcement. The listing shows expected awards as 0, which can sometimes appear in archived postings or may reflect administrative specifics of how the opportunity was recorded rather than a definitive statement that no award would be made.

Overall, this funding opportunity is best understood as support for applied ecological monitoring in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, combining terrestrial vegetation work and aquatic bioassessment using macroinvertebrates. The deliverables are fundamentally the field measurements and the well-managed data products that allow GRSM to track ecological conditions, support protection of high-value resources like wetlands and rare plants, and contribute credible information to partners and the broader public.

• The Department of the Interior, National Park Service in the natural resources sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Vegetation and Aquatic Macroinvertebrate" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.931.
• This funding opportunity was created on May 09, 2017.
• Applicants must submit their applications by May 15, 2017. (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 $32,940.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

Apply for P17AS00235

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