Grants / Department of the Interior / Geological Survey

G22AS00364: Cooperative Agreement for CESU-affiliated Partner with Colorado Plateau Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit

Closed Closed June 17, 2022 Opportunity G22AS00364 ☆ Save

This grant is closed. A newer notice from the same program is open now: Cooperative Agreement for affiliated Partner with Alaska Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (G27AS00066). Status: Closes December 7, 2026 (30 days left). It is in our archive of Geological Survey notices from 2022.

• Award ceiling$210,265
• Cost sharingNot required
• Funding typeCooperative Agreement

Key dates

Who can apply

This opportunity was open to the applicants described in the notice.

• Others (see text field entitled "Additional Information on Eligibility" for clarification)

This financial assistance opportunity is being issued under a Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) Program. CESUs are partnerships that provide research, technical assistance, and education. Eligible recipients must be a participating partner of the Colorado Plateau Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) Program.

Is this a realistic fit?

• Past U.S. Geological Survey Research and Data Collection awards averaged $557,251; this notice allows up to $210,265 per award.
• Most of the program's money (84% over five years) went to colleges and universities.
• No cost sharing or match is required.

What the grant funds

The USGS is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for research in the influence of paraglacial processes on rock slope stability in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The USGS Landslide Hazards Program (LHP) conducts research on the processes and conditions leading to landslide occurrence. Current efforts of the LHP are focused on identifying the potential for tsunamigenic landslides in southeast Alaska, as these may pose hazards to local communities, recreationalists, shipping traffic, and important natural and cultural resources in the region. Tsunamigenic landslides are possible and potentially increasing in hazard with ongoing deglaciation of tidewater glaciers that currently extend from mountainous ice fields down to sea level. Rock slopes that abut glaciers are subject to paraglacial processes that result from cycles of glaciation and deglaciation and include changes in temperature, water infiltration, and ice buttressing stress. Thus, glaciation cycles can drive changes in the thermal, hydrologic, and mechanical boundary conditions of rock slopes, which can subsequently generate rock mass damage that culminates in failure of the rock slopes abutting glaciers. While the concept of glacial debuttressing is typically invoked to explain the presence of rock slope failures through the loss of a mechanical ice buttressing, it has been shown that the debuttressing framework must be expanded to include coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) stresses resulting from changing boundary conditions over time, each tied to the changing glacier ice surface position and elevation. We are thus soliciting an opportunity to conduct field-informed and numerically based THM modeling of paraglacial rock slopes to identify why particular rock slopes become critically stressed, such that they experience acceleration and failure in response to removal of even small amounts of ice support. Answering this question will allow the USGS to gain insight as to what concerns the region may face in the future if current worldwide deglaciation trends continue. USGS researchers are already working on this problem and thus, this funding opportunity is naturally cooperative and collaborative in design. This work intends to directly benefit US tax payers through the ability of the USGS to inform its partners (including but not limited to the State of Alaska, the National Tsunami Warning Center, the National Weather Service, the U.S.

Category: Science and Technology and other Research and Development.

Applying now

This notice no longer takes applications. Apply under the newer notice, G27AS00066, which is open now.

The notice on Grants.gov keeps its full text and attachments, which is useful for planning a resubmission.