Cooperative Agreement for CESU-affiliated Partner with Great Lakes – Northern Forest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit | G24AS00155

Opportunity Information: Apply for G24AS00155

This grant opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number G24AS00155) is a US Geological Survey discretionary funding announcement for a cooperative agreement focused on fisheries research in Lake Erie. It is issued under the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) Program, specifically the Great Lakes - Northern Forest CESU network. Because it is a CESU opportunity, eligibility is limited to organizations that are already participating partners in that specific CESU; it is not broadly open to the general public or to institutions outside the network.

The project goal is to improve understanding of how climate-driven and other large-scale abiotic environmental conditions influence fish recruitment in Lake Erie. In fisheries science, recruitment refers to the number of young fish that survive and enter the population in a way that matters for future abundance, fishery yield, and conservation outcomes. The opportunity highlights the well-known "recruitment problem," where recruitment can swing dramatically from year to year even when the size of the spawning stock does not change much. That unpredictability makes it difficult for fisheries managers to forecast population trajectories and set harvest limits that balance ecological risk with fishery performance. When recruitment is poorly understood, population assessment models become highly sensitive to how recruitment is represented, which reduces confidence in management advice derived from those models.

The research emphasis is on linking recruitment variability to macro-scale abiotic drivers that are relevant in the Laurentian Great Lakes and are expected to shift with climate change. The opportunity specifically notes factors that have been identified or hypothesized as influencing recruitment, including lake elevation (water levels), ice cover extent and duration, precipitation timing and amount, and extreme events such as strong wind episodes and seiche events (water level oscillations driven by wind and pressure changes). A key scientific premise is that these drivers may not affect all fish in the same way; instead, their influence may differ across reproductive guilds, meaning groups of species that share similar spawning strategies or habitat requirements. Understanding those differences can help explain why certain species or groups have strong year classes under some conditions while others do not.

From a management and applied science standpoint, the work is framed around improving the ability to forecast fish community dynamics under projected climate scenarios. Better estimates of how recruitment responds to changing abiotic conditions could be incorporated into population assessments or community-level assessment tools, making them more useful for decision-making. The broader outcome described is support for biodiversity preservation and more climate-informed fisheries management in Lake Erie, where managers need tools that can anticipate future recruitment patterns rather than only reacting to them after the fact.

Administratively, the award is a cooperative agreement, which typically means there is expected to be substantial involvement by the federal agency during the project (for example, collaboration on study design, data integration, interpretation, or coordination with ongoing USGS efforts), rather than a hands-off grant. The assistance listing is under CFDA (now commonly referred to as Assistance Listing) 15.808. The posted award ceiling is $120,214, and the original closing date listed is 2023-12-08.

• 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 Great Lakes – Northern Forest 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 2023-11-07.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2023-12-08. (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 $120,214.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

Apply for G24AS00155

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