The Lake Champlain Sea Grant program has announced a Request for Proposals (RFP) for research projects aimed at supporting applicable research in and for the Lake Champlain Basin.
Donor Name: Lake Champlain Sea Grant Institute (LCSG)
State: New York, Vermont
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 02/14/2025
Size of the Grant: $100,000 to $500,000
Grant Duration: 2 Years
Details:
The Lake Champlain Sea Grant Institute (LCSG) requests proposals for research in the Lake Champlain basin in the areas of:
- Environmental literacy and workforce development
- Healthy coastal ecosystems
- Sustainable fisheries and aquaculture
- Resilient communities and economies.
LCSG strives to fund scientists from diverse backgrounds and achieve outcomes for diverse and underserved communities. Institutions of higher education, state and local government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and businesses that conduct research in the Lake Champlain basin in New York and Vermont are eligible to respond to this request for proposals (RFP).
Goals
Proposals must support one or more of the LCSG Strategic Plan (2024–2028) goals listed below.
- Focus Area: Environmental Literacy and Workforce Development
- Goal 1: A diverse and environmentally literate public participates in lifelong formal, non-formal, and informal learning opportunities and implements innovative solutions to improve community well-being in the face of a changing Lake Champlain basin.
- Goal 2: A diverse, skilled, and environmentally literate workforce is engaged and able to build prosperous lives and livelihoods in a changing world through traditional and innovative careers.
- Focus Area: Healthy Coastal Ecosystems
- Goal 3: Habitat, ecosystems, and the services they provide are protected and/or restored in the Lake Champlain basin.
- Goal 4: Land, water, and living resources are managed by applying sound science, tools, and services to sustain resilient ecosystems in the Lake Champlain basin.
- Focus Area: Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture
- Goal 5: Domestic fisheries, aquaculture, aquaponics, and other living freshwater resources supply food, jobs, economic, and cultural benefits in the Lake Champlain basin.
- Goal 6: Natural resources are sustainably managed to support coastal communities and working waterfronts, including industrial, recreational, subsistence fisheries, aquaculture, and aquaponics in the Lake Champlain basin.
- Focus Area: Resilient Communities and Economies
- Goal 7: Lake Champlain basin communities and economies have resilient capability and the resources to prepare for and adapt to changing environmental conditions, climate change, extreme weather, coastal hazards, economic disruptions, and other threats to community health and well-being.
- Goal 8: Aquatic resources are sustained and protected to meet emerging needs of the communities, economies, and ecosystems of the Lake Champlain basin.
Priority Research Topics
Priority research topics and approaches:
- Increasing resilience to climate change and extreme events, including community hazard resiliency, community and municipal planning, climate change adaptation, and emergency preparedness
- Forecasting climate change, extreme weather, and flooding, including real-time data, modeling, and potential environmental, health, and economic impacts
- Riparian and upland forest restoration and management for the purposes of water quality protection, flood resilience, and habitat improvement
- Economic analysis of replacing existing infrastructure (e.g., culverts, bridges) compared to resilient infrastructure or nature-based solutions after extreme events
- Road salt impacts on the environment (e.g., soils, wells, surface water) and best management practice effectiveness (to assess practices and polices)
- Projects that address any priority or additional research topic and include an emphasis on environmental justice and/or participatory or community science.
The following additional research topics also align with LCSG’s programmatic foci.
- Use of traditional, local, and Indigenous knowledge for watershed and lake use and management, including how traditional local and Indigenous management of streams, rivers, and wetland systems reduces runoff and other impacts on lakes
- Socio-economic influences on watershed and lake use and management, especially those with an environmental justice component
- Impact of upland land use, community planning, and zoning decisions on water quantity and quality
- Increasing individual and community resilience to climate change, specifically as it relates to environmental justice
- Impacts of climate change on winters, including ice cover, snowpack, recreational sporting, water quality, and economics
- Lake food webs, including aquatic non-native species and biosecurity
- Shoreline habitat protection, restoration, and management
- Reducing runoff entering surface and groundwaters, including dynamics, pollutant loads, influences of climate change, and cost-effective solutions
- Nutrients and pollutants that affect watershed health and lake ecosystems, including cyanobacteria
- Green infrastructure and clean water initiatives
- Opportunities and barriers for aquaculture and fisheries to contribute to local food production and food security in the Lake Champlain basin, including assessments of sustainability, best management practices, local and regional regulations, business models, and potential contaminants
- Microplastics and marine debris in Lake Champlain and its tributaries
- Lake Champlain Sea Grant welcomes Lake Champlain-focused proposals that address the following priorities. Lake Champlain and the Great Lakes (like other freshwater and marine systems around the world) are projected to experience acidification. Great Lakes Sea Grant programs are prioritizing research to, a) elucidate spatiotemporal trends in carbonate chemistry within the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain region, b) consider potential effects of carbonate chemistry changes on physical, chemical, and biological, including upper trophic level, dynamics of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain, and c) use social and natural science methods to explore management strategies in regard to carbonate chemistry changes.
Funding Information
Approximately $900,000 in funds are available, and researchers may apply for up to $100,000 of federal funds for one-year projects or $200,000 for two-year projects.
Eligibility Criteria
- The National Sea Grant College Program champions diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) by recruiting, retaining, and preparing a diverse workforce and proactively engaging and serving the diverse populations of coastal communities. Sea Grant is committed to building inclusive research, extension, communication, and education programs that serve people with unique backgrounds, circumstances, needs, perspectives, and ways of thinking. They encourage applicants of any age, race, ethnicity, national origin, color, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, culture, religion, citizenship status, marital status, education level, job classification, veteran status, and income and socioeconomic status to apply for this competitive research opportunity.
- PIs must be from an institution of higher education, government agency, non-profit organization, or private for-profit company. Researchers from outside the Lake Champlain basin are eligible to submit a proposal, but the research being proposed must be conducted, at least in part, in the Lake Champlain basin. Both single investigators and multiple-investigator research teams from different institutions are encouraged to apply. LCSG encourages participation from both the natural science and social science research communities and applications from early career researchers.
For more information, visit LCSG.
