Cooperative Agreement for Affiliated Partner with the Rocky Mountain Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU)

The USGS is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for research that will support the development of resources that expedite review and authorization of new projects. Resources include web-based tools that support project proponents and federal staff that review project documentation to conduct reviews more efficiently. This work is supporting the Permitting Council and their priorities by developing a cloud-native Environmental Review Partner Portal to support environmental review workflows. Central to this is improving availability and accessibility to sound ecological science products and data to inform and defend environmental permitting decisions. Therefore, this is inherently tied to ecosystem research and requires a performer with domain knowledge. The research to be completed under this opportunity is to investigate and identify source information most relevant to different workflows and solving barriers to timely access such that in alignment with EO 14303 Restoring Gold Standard Science federal decisions may be informed by the most credible and impartial scientific evidence. The purpose of this study is to get a baseline understanding of existing processes and the functionality that will most effectively deliver the intended benefits. As such, discovery research needs to be conducted to gather and synthesize necessary information on various management workflows, what systems are used, who is involved at which stages, where and how data are accessed and input, and where processes align or diverge based on land ownership, scale, and statutory authority. What is discovered shall be used to inform requirements for new resources that will maintain integrity while creating efficiencies and improving transparency. The goal of this research is to provide timely and actionable science that helps resource managers make informed decisions related to project authorization and natural resource management. The cooperation of the USGS and its CESU partner brings a combination of expertise to address this objective that is greater than that possessed by either partner on its own.