Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Great Lakes Northern Forests CESU | G19AS00125

Opportunity Information: Apply for G19AS00125

The Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Great Lakes Northern Forests CESU funding opportunity (USGS, Department of the Interior) supports a research effort aimed at improving how the United States maps and understands development in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). The WUI is broadly described as places where homes are intermixed with, or immediately adjacent to, wildland vegetation, and it is a central concept for evaluating wildfire exposure, planning mitigation strategies, and estimating risk to communities. The purpose of this award is to help the USGS move beyond coarse national products and toward a spatially detailed, nationally consistent WUI dataset that better supports decision-making at multiple scales.

A key motivation behind the project is that existing national WUI maps have typically relied on US Census Bureau housing counts combined with remotely sensed land-cover data, following the 2001 Federal Register definition of the WUI. Those national approaches are useful for broad estimates of WUI extent and decadal change, but they often do not provide the fine spatial detail needed for practical mitigation and more precise risk assessments. In response, many local and regional mapping efforts have produced higher-resolution WUI layers using other sources of information, such as point locations of structures, parcel centroids, modeled or gridded population datasets (for example, LandScan), or census housing data redistributed to finer grids using dasymetric mapping. The problem is that when these local and state products are combined or compared nationally, differences in WUI definitions, methods, and input datasets can create inconsistencies and uncertainty, making it difficult to analyze national patterns and trends in a reliable, apples-to-apples way.

The work funded under this opportunity is framed as both a synthesis and a development effort. An essential first step is to compare and evaluate existing WUI maps to determine what they have in common and, just as importantly, to document how and why their definitions and implementation choices differ. This comparison is intended to surface shared features across mapping efforts, clarify where definitions diverge (such as how housing density thresholds are set or how vegetation adjacency is interpreted), and identify methodological reasons for disagreement among maps. USGS emphasizes that this upfront step is meant to promote coordination with other federal and state agencies, reduce duplication of effort, and ensure that any new national WUI product aligns with partner needs as much as possible.

Building on those findings, the project is expected to guide the creation of a new national-scale WUI map that is both spatially detailed and consistent across the country. The opportunity explicitly references producing a map that identifies both major WUI types commonly used in wildfire planning: the interface WUI (development adjacent to wildland vegetation) and the intermix WUI (development interspersed within wildland vegetation). A concrete deliverable requirement is that the resulting WUI dataset must be made publicly available in standard GIS formats, specifically as shapefiles and/or raster layers, distributed through a public FTP site or a similar public-access mechanism so that agencies, researchers, and practitioners can readily use it.

Another major expectation is that the research will not stop at producing a map; it must also address the reliability of that map. The project should quantitatively characterize how data gaps, uncertainty, and errors in the underlying source datasets propagate into the final WUI product. This means incorporating validation work and uncertainty and/or sensitivity analyses that help users understand where the map is robust, where it is more uncertain, and how much the output depends on specific data inputs or methodological assumptions. In practice, this kind of analysis supports more defensible national assessments and helps end users interpret the map appropriately when applying it to wildfire hazard modeling, risk comparisons across regions, and mitigation planning.

Administratively, this is a discretionary funding opportunity issued by the U.S. Geological Survey under a cooperative agreement, categorized under science and technology and other research and development (CFDA 15.808). Eligibility is limited to CESU partners (with details referenced in the announcement’s eligibility section). The opportunity number is G19AS00125, originally posted July 29, 2019, with an original closing date of August 16, 2019. USGS anticipated making one award with an award ceiling of $270,000.

• 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 Lakes Northern Forests 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 29, 2019.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Aug 16, 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 $270,000.00 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 G19AS00125

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