BLM UT Cedar City Field Office Landscape Conservation Forecasting Model | L16AS00112

Opportunity Information: Apply for L16AS00112

The BLM UT Cedar City Field Office Landscape Conservation Forecasting Model opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number L16AS00112) is a Bureau of Land Management discretionary grant offered as a cooperative agreement under CFDA 15.231 (Natural Resources). It was designed to fund a single award (Expected Awards: 1) with a maximum federal amount of $110,000, and it was open to unrestricted applicants. The opportunity was posted on May 11, 2016, with an original closing date of July 11, 2016.

This project builds directly on earlier Landscape Conservation Forecasting work that began when the Cedar City Field Office received funding in 2012 for a vegetative monitoring study. That initial effort, carried out by The Nature Conservancy and finalized in a report released in January 2016, focused on the Bald Hills and Hamlin Valley. The earlier study used a practical framework organized around "Maps, Measures, and Models" to connect ecological conditions to specific, on-the-ground vegetation treatment actions. One of the key outputs was a set of recommended management actions for major vegetation types within the Cedar City Field Office, emphasizing treatment approaches expected to yield a high return on investment. Those actions were intended to move ecological sites toward improved Desired Plant Communities while taking cost and budget limits into account.

The new grant opportunity sought a non-federal partner to help the BLM develop science-based management strategies supporting both short-term and long-term watershed restoration across the Cedar City Field Office, with particular attention to the Mountain Home and Pine Valley areas. A central expectation was the use of geospatial methods, including satellite imagery, to help assess conditions at a landscape scale and guide where and how vegetation treatments should be implemented on public lands. Through this collaboration, the BLM and the partner would work on developing state-and-transition ecological models, which are commonly used to describe how plant communities can shift between conditions due to disturbances, management actions, and environmental drivers. These models would then be used to shape and prioritize future restoration projects.

The practical goal of the effort was to produce a decision-support model that helps managers determine where to invest restoration funding on the ground in a cost-beneficial way. In other words, the work is aimed at improving how treatment dollars are targeted by tying ecological condition mapping and predictive modeling to budget realities and expected outcomes, so that restoration actions can be selected and placed where they are most likely to deliver measurable ecological improvement per dollar spent.

The stated public benefit centers on generating GIS-based ecological condition datasets and forecasting tools that predict how conditions may change under different management scenarios. Those products would support the development of clearer management goals, objectives, and actions for future watershed restoration, while also providing scenario-based comparisons of alternative strategies. A notable emphasis is on including cost-benefit analyses in the GIS modeling scenarios, so that the public and land managers can see which restoration approaches and technologies are likely to be the most cost-effective for conserving, protecting, and improving ecological conditions through future vegetation treatments.

• The Bureau of Land Management in the natural resources sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "BLM UT Cedar City Field Office Landscape Conservation Forecasting Model" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.231.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2016-05-11.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2016-07-11. (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 $110,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted.

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