USDA/USDOI Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP)

GRANT OPPORTUNITY FORECAST

USDA/USDOI Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP)

Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA): July - September 2021

Potential Topics

June 2021

Background

The interagency Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) intends to request proposals through one or more formal Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOA) beginning approximately July 2021 and remaining open 60 days. The intent of this announcement is to provide an early alert to investigators interested in the topics below so they can begin considering responsive ideas with potential partners and collaborators.

Investigators should recognize that final decisions regarding topic selection will not be made until Summer of 2021 and that final topic selection may differ from that posted here. One or more topics could be dropped or added, and the specific focus of individual topics may be altered. Investigators should recognize this uncertainty and not invest substantial time or resources working on proposals until the FOAs and their associated topics are formally posted.

Investigators should not contact the JFSP Office or Governing Board members seeking further information on these topics. No further information will be released until the FOAs are formally posted.

Primary FOA

A. Social and ecological recovery of communities impacted by wildfire

Societal losses from wildfire have increased in recent decades. In addition to structure damages and losses, communities directly impacted by wildfire face significant challenges in recovery, including, rebuilding community infrastructure, remediation of contaminants, and recovery of local economies. Altered post-fire ecological processes or states (e.g., hydrologic cycles, invasive species incursions) can also have profound impacts on communities far outside the wildfire boundary reliant on the ecosystem services provided by those processes and states. Thus, community recovery from wildfire must be considered in the context of coupled social-ecological systems. In addition, recent and ongoing changes in both the fire and community environments, such as lengthening fire seasons and increased density of residential structures, will likely necessitate forward looking recovery strategies that anticipate changing conditions. JFSP is interested in new science that will inform the development or improvement of strategies, tools, and resources used for post-fire community recovery, such that they facilitate recovery efforts that increase the resilience of social-ecological systems to future wildfires.

B. Collaborative development of ecosystem mapping products for fire and fuels management

Access to dynamic maps of ecosystem condition, desired condition, and departure from desired condition is critical for developing and communicating strategic fire and fuels management strategies at landscape to regional scales. Several mapping products have been developed at national scales that characterize current and/or desired ecosystem condition and have been used by resource managers to prioritize fuels management and restoration activities (e.g., LANDFIRE). However, national-level mapping products are not always applicable to landscape- or regional-level prioritization processes. Managers have for example expressed the need of products with finer resolution, greater accuracy in some fuel or vegetation characteristics, greater dynamism to capture the rapidly changing nature of vegetation and fuels, or that incorporate some measure of variability in fuel and vegetation characteristics. Advances in citizen science; satellite, airborne, and terrestrial remote sensing have greatly increased the ability to address these identified needs, but many of the newest technologies have been applied primarily in research settings. As a result, JFSP may look for proposals to develop, using a collaborative framework, prototype mapping protocols and products that capture current ecosystem condition, desired condition, and departure from desired condition at spatial and temporal resolutions relevant to fire and fuels management decisions.

GRIN FOA - Graduate Research Innovation (GRIN) Award

In partnership with the Association for Fire Ecology, the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) will likely continue the Graduate Research Innovation (GRIN) program for current master and doctoral students in the field of wildland fire and related physical, biological, and social sciences. The purpose of these awards is to enhance student exposure to the management and policy relevance of their research. As a result, these awards will enable graduate students to conduct research that will supplement and enhance the quality, scope, or applicability of their thesis or dissertation to develop information and products useful to managers and decision-makers.

Proposals must describe new, unfunded work that extends ongoing or planned research that is the subject of a thesis or dissertation that has been approved by the graduate student's advisory committee. Proposals must be directly related to the mission and goals of JFSP to be considered, and they must address management- or policy-related questions related to one or more of the following general topic areas: fuels management and fire behavior, emissions and air quality, fire effects and post-fire recovery, relative impacts of prescribed fire versus wildfire, or human dimensions of fire.

Note: the specific topics eligible for GRIN proposals identified in the FOA may differ from those listed above.

Regional Fire Science Exchange FOA

The JFSP is looking to solicit proposals to lead and execute a particular regional fire science exchange for a period of one to three years. The JFSP funds and provides oversight to a national collaborative of 15 regional wildland fire science exchanges of the Fire Science Exchange Network (FSEN). The FSEN provides the most relevant, current wildland fire science information to federal, state, local, tribal, and private stakeholders within ecologically similar regions. The FSEN brings fire, fuel, natural resource, and land managers, practitioners, and scientists together to address regional wildland fire management needs and challenges. Please see the JFSP website (https://www.firescience.gov) for additional information about the FSEN.

This solicitation may seek individual proposals (i.e., each proposal must be specific to one region) for the following six regions of the FSEN: Southern, Southern Rockies, Southwest, Appalachians, Great Plains and North Atlantic (see map below).