Cooperative Agreement for CESU-affiliated Partner with Desert Southwest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit | G21AS00315

Opportunity Information: Apply for G21AS00315

This U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) funding opportunity supports a Cooperative Agreement with an eligible partner in the Desert Southwest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (DSCESU). The project is titled "Web-based Help for Invasive Species Control (WHISC) - Research and Programming Support" and focuses on improving how land managers in the Sonoran Desert plan and time control actions for buffelgrass (Pennisetum ciliare), a highly invasive perennial that displaces native plants and increases wildfire risk by changing fuel conditions and fire regimes. The core management challenge is timing: herbicide treatments work best when buffelgrass is actively photosynthesizing (green), yet buffelgrass can remain widespread on the landscape in a dry, highly flammable state and only greens up after rainfall. Because monsoon precipitation is often intense but localized, managers have difficulty predicting where and when buffelgrass will be green enough for effective treatment. USGS is funding work that makes these decisions more data-driven by delivering predictive, map-based guidance through an improved web platform.

The WHISC tool builds on published USGS science (Wallace et al. 2016) that demonstrated a way to detect buffelgrass and identify optimal treatment windows by combining satellite greenness signals with precipitation patterns. Specifically, the work relies on "Climate-Landscape Response" (CLaRe) metrics derived from the relationship between MODIS satellite imagery (greenness at roughly 250-meter resolution) and PRISM precipitation data. The key insight is that buffelgrass responds quickly and strongly to rain events, producing a tight correlation between precipitation and satellite-observed greenness in a given pixel. Pixels with higher CLaRe correlation values can therefore reveal buffelgrass influence, even at relatively low densities, and small additions of buffelgrass to native vegetation can push those correlation values higher. The same metric also helps stratify the landscape by rooting depth and vegetation type, since deeply rooted systems like forests and woodlands tend to show weaker short-term greenness responses to rain than grasslands and scrub. Using these relationships, USGS has been generating weekly "Buffelgrass Treatment Targets" (BTTs), but they have been delivered through a prototype website with limited interactivity. This award is aimed at making those products easier to use, more timely, and more actionable for practitioners.

The project has several connected objectives. First, the partner will work directly with USGS staff, practitioners, and land managers to continue designing and building out the WHISC website so it can reliably serve four main categories of information: (1) weekly BTT maps, (2) maps of the model inputs used to create BTTs, (3) indicators of current landscape status compared to historical conditions, and (4) an alerting capability intended to highlight patterns and trends that could indicate emerging or nascent buffelgrass populations. Second, the project seeks to move from a weekly, desktop-based workflow (currently run on a USGS PC) to a more automated, real-time approach using AI-enabled methods and cloud-based data processing and programming. That shift is intended to make target identification faster and more scalable, and it will be tested and adjusted based on performance during the upcoming monsoon season. This objective also includes producing a peer-reviewed journal article describing the real-time target modeling approach and evaluating its effectiveness.

Third, the work emphasizes user-centered design: the partner will actively engage managers and practitioners to learn how they want to interact with these datasets and what kinds of controls or customization would make the tool more useful in day-to-day operations. The intent is to implement features that support user preferences where feasible, then evaluate and iterate to improve practical utility. Fourth, the project expands beyond treatment timing into improved distribution mapping by refining buffelgrass presence models at both 250-meter and 30-meter resolution, reconstructing historical presence where possible, and assessing changes over space and time. That modeling effort is also expected to result in a journal article focused on buffelgrass distribution estimation and trends. Fifth, the project will analyze historical and current CLaRe metrics explicitly for change detection, looking for time-based signals that may indicate new infestations and generating information that can prompt targeted field checks and verification, effectively turning the remote-sensing workflow into an early warning support layer for managers.

Overall, the grant is structured as a cooperative agreement under the CESU program, meaning USGS expects substantial involvement and collaboration rather than a hands-off subaward. Eligibility is limited to organizations that are already participating partners in the Desert Southwest CESU. The opportunity is listed as a discretionary award in the science and technology/research and development category (CFDA 15.808), with an award ceiling of $84,000. The funding is meant to strengthen an operational, web-delivered decision support system that helps managers apply herbicide when it will actually work, prioritize treatment locations, and potentially spot new buffelgrass outbreaks earlier by turning satellite and climate data into practical, regularly updated management intelligence.

• The Geological Survey in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Cooperative Agreement for CESU-affiliated Partner with Desert Southwest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit" 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 2021-02-10.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2021-03-03. (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 $84,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

Apply for G21AS00315

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