Develop a Groundwater Management Tool | P18AS00319

Opportunity Information: Apply for P18AS00319

The grant opportunity titled "Develop a Groundwater Management Tool" (Funding Opportunity Number P18AS00319) is a National Park Service project focused on strengthening how Grand Canyon National Park manages, analyzes, and uses groundwater and cave-related information. At its core, the work is meant to move the park toward a more organized, reliable, and defensible approach for handling continuous hydrologic data and cave resource records, then using that improved data foundation to design a monitoring network that accurately captures how groundwater behaves across the park. The bigger intent is practical as well as scientific: build a monitoring strategy that is robust enough to represent the real variability of the aquifer system, but also efficient and cost-effective to operate over time.

A major piece of the project centers on data management protocols, particularly for hydrology. The National Park Service uses Aquarius Informatics as its selected platform for managing and storing continuous hydrologic data, and this award supports the work needed to make Aquarius implementation consistent and secure for Grand Canyon-specific datasets. The project objectives call for describing and documenting an efficient and secure process for incorporating both new and existing Grand Canyon hydrologic data into Aquarius. In plain terms, the deliverable is not just "put the data in the system," but to produce clear, repeatable procedures that show exactly how data will be ingested, validated, organized, and protected, so the park can keep adding data in the future without reinventing the process each time or risking loss, confusion, or security problems.

Alongside the data-management work, the project is designed to produce a model that improves understanding of aquifer variability within Grand Canyon National Park. That model is expected to be published and used as a decision-support product that helps the park design a sufficient monitoring network. The emphasis on variability is important because groundwater systems can behave very differently across short distances due to geology, recharge conditions, structural features, and connections to springs, seeps, and caves. By producing a scientifically defensible representation of how the aquifer behaves in different areas or under different conditions, the park can prioritize where monitoring stations should go, what types of sensors are needed, and how dense the network needs to be to capture meaningful change. The end goal is a monitoring design that is credible to scientists and managers while staying within realistic budget and logistical limits.

The third key objective is the development of a comprehensive cave resource database. This reflects the close relationship between caves and groundwater at the Grand Canyon, where caves can serve as pathways, indicators, or repositories of hydrologic information and related resource conditions. The project supports organizing cave information into a structured database that can be managed as a resource over time. While the notice does not specify the database schema, the intent is to consolidate and systematize cave resource data so it is easier to store, retrieve, update, and use alongside hydrologic datasets and monitoring results.

From an administrative standpoint, this is a discretionary funding opportunity offered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, under a cooperative agreement funding instrument and categorized under Natural Resources (CFDA 15.945). Eligibility is limited to public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, indicating the park is seeking an academic partner capable of technical work in hydrology, data systems, modeling, and database development. The opportunity was created on June 13, 2018, with an original closing date of June 22, 2018, signaling a short application window typical of targeted, project-specific cooperative agreements. The expected award count is one, with an award ceiling of $182,115, suggesting a single partner will be selected to carry the full scope from protocol development through modeling and database advancement.

Taken together, the grant funds a tightly connected set of deliverables: standardized and secure hydrologic data workflows into Aquarius, a published model that clarifies aquifer variability and directly informs a monitoring network design, and a more complete cave resource database. The practical outcome for Grand Canyon National Park is a stronger groundwater management toolset that improves long-term monitoring decisions, preserves institutional knowledge in documented processes, and makes critical cave and hydrologic information easier to manage and apply to resource protection.

• The Department of the Interior, National Park Service in the natural resources sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Develop a Groundwater Management Tool" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.945.
• This funding opportunity was created on Jun 13, 2018.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jun 22, 2018. (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 $182,115.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Public and State controlled institutions of higher education.

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