The Chesapeake Bay Trust has announced the Pooled Monitoring Initiative’s Restoration Research Award Program to answer several key restoration questions that are a barrier to watershed restoration project implementation.

The Chesapeake Bay Trust, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Chesapeake Bay Program Office, the Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration, the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection, and other partners announce a Request for Proposals for its Restoration Research award program. 

Funding partners hope that answering these questions will ultimately lead to increased confidence in proposed restoration project outcomes, clarification of the optimal site conditions in which to apply particular restoration techniques, information useful to regulatory agencies in project permitting, and information that will help guide monitoring programs. This program supports the Pooled Monitoring Initiative that is designed to connect key storm water and stream restoration questions posed by the regulatory and practitioner communities with researchers.

Themes

The following research questions are organized into four themes:

• Effectiveness of stormwater and stream restoration programs at the watershed/catchment scale
• Effectiveness of restoration practices at the project scale
• Impact of construction activities on natural resource
• Trade-offs in resource improvements incurred by restoration practices and the resulting net ecological change as measured by a common “currency

Funding Information

Funding partners have allocated approximately $900,000 for this research program. Literature reviews will be funded at up to $50,000 and there is no cap for research projects.

Eligible Project Types

Members of the regulatory and restoration communities have worked together to identify several key restoration questions that are challenging watershed restoration work in the Chesapeake. Investigators may request funds to undertake the following activities pertaining to any of these questions:

• Conduct a literature review/synthesis, if the case can be made that enough is already known about a question ($50,000 maximum request);
• Answer a component of the question with a research project in which specific hypotheses are tested. Research projects may include:
  • experimental or descriptive work in the field;
  • experimental work in the laboratory;
  • modeling studies; and/or iv. use of existing data, if deemed appropriately suited (properly collected with appropriate metadata); or
• Develop a regulatory or practitioner tool related to one or more of the questions that advances the pace or efficacy of the field in question, if the case can be made the tool is needed and you have ample information to support tool development.

Who can apply?

Both not-for-profit entities (academic institutions, non-profit organizations) and for-profit entities are permitted to apply. The strongest proposals will show committed partnerships with various types of organizations. Organizations need not be based in Maryland, but the work must be relevant to Maryland’s restoration, regulatory, and/or practitioner communities.

For more information, visit Chesapeake Bay Trust.