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Pooled Monitoring Initiative’s Restoration Research Award Program in the US

Deadline: 23-Jan-2025

The Chesapeake Bay Trust has launched the Pooled Monitoring Initiative’s Restoration Research Award Program to answer several key restoration questions that are a barrier to watershed restoration project implementation.

Program Goals
  • Efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries call for a significant increase in the number of watershed restoration projects intended to improve both water quality and habitat. The practitioner, regulatory, management, policy, and scientific communities are united in their desire to support the best, most cost-effective practices at the best sites. However, differences of opinion sometimes exist, and questions about the performance and function of some of these practices persist.
  • The Pooled Monitoring Initiative pools resources to support scientists who answer key restoration questions posed by the regulatory and practitioner communities through this Restoration Research Request for Proposals (RFP). The research teams then provide the answers back to those who asked the questions for direct application. The goal of the Restoration Research award program is to answer these key restoration questions that serve as a barrier to watershed restoration project implementation. Funding partners hope that answering these questions will ultimately lead to increased confidence in proposed restoration project outcomes, clarification of the optimal site conditions in which to apply particular restoration techniques, information useful to regulatory agencies in project permitting, and information that will help guide monitoring programs.
  • The ability to pool funding allows for rigorous research to address these large, complicated questions that require robust experimental design carried out by the best research teams. Finally, the RFP research questions are the result of the top key restoration questions identified for a particular year and the previous RFP questions may be removed while research is ongoing to inform future research direction.
  • This program is funded by the Chesapeake Bay Trust (the Trust), the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Chesapeake Bay Program Office, Anne Arundel County, Baltimore City, Charles County, Frederick County, Harford County, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, and the Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration.
Funding Information
  • Funding partners have allocated just over $1.8 M for this research program. Literature reviews will be funded at up to $50,000 and there is no cap for research projects.
Eligible Projects
  • Members of the regulatory and restoration communities have worked together to identify several key restoration questions that are challenging watershed restoration work in the Chesapeake. Investigators may request funds to undertake the following activities pertaining to any of these questions:
    • Conduct a literature review/synthesis, if the case can be made that enough is already known about a question ($50,000 maximum request);
    • Answer a component of the question with a research project in which specific hypotheses are tested. Research projects may include:
      • experimental or descriptive work in the field;
      • experimental work in the laboratory;
      • modeling studies; and/or iv. use of existing data, if deemed appropriately suited (properly collected with appropriate metadata); or
    • Develop a regulatory or practitioner tool related to one or more of the questions that advances the pace or efficacy of the field in question, if the case can be made the tool is needed and you have ample information to support tool development.
Eligibility Criteria
  • Both not-for-profit entities (academic institutions, non-profit organizations) and for-profit entities are permitted to apply. The strongest proposals will show committed partnerships with various types of organizations.
  • Organizations need not be based in Maryland, but the work must be relevant to Maryland’s restoration, regulatory, and/or practitioner communities since many funders are based in this state

For more information, visit Chesapeake Bay Trust.