April 7, 2010 final

GEOSS/AMI Full Proposal Format

Pre-proposal ideas favorably reviewed and recommended by the EPA GEO Committee are being invited to develop full proposals using the following format. Full proposals should not exceed ten pages (does not include the Appendix). Please use MS Word, one-sided, Times New Roman 12-point font, one inch margins, 8.5 by 11 paper, single spaced. It is recommended that footnoted text be used sparingly, since it will count toward the ten-page maximum.

To comply with Agency ethics and competition requirements, EPA employees cannot seek, obtain, or offer collaboration on proposals from outside parties (non-EPA) prior to any funding decisions.

I. Abstract Summary Information (suggest 1 page)

A. Project Title: California Ecological and Water Footprints

B. EPA Project Lead and Team Members Names and Organizations

Sarah Rizk (PI)

Don Hodge (co-PI)

C. Identify Project Period (Project period must not exceed the period of performance of

the funding vehicle)

D. Amount of AMI Funding Requested from OSA

E. Project Summary – Should include a brief description to: 1) Identify the expected major tangible results and products; 2) Identify the eventual application to improve environmental decision-making; and 3) Describe how the project will further the development of GEOSS.

1) Support the Administrator’s priorities and further the development of GEOSS;

Administrator’s priorities:

  • Taking Action on Climate Change
  • adaptation to a changing climate with decreasing snowpack, increasing variability in precipitation, more temperature extremes  all of which affect our resource flow
  • mitigation: scenarios presented may drive policy toward mitigating emissions (N2O and others)
  • Improving Air Quality
  • Assuring the Safety of Chemical
  • Cleaning Up Our Communities
  • Protecting America’s Waters
  • Nitrate contaminated groundwater- greywater footprint
  • Expanding the Conversation on Environmentalism and Working for Environmental Justice
  • Expanding conversation should include discussion of imbalance between resources supplied and resources consumed
  • Building Strong State and Tribal Partnerships
  • CA large, complex, great case study, lots of data available, willingness to collaborate, progressively addressing issues

GEOSS

  • Data and Information Infrastructure
  • Integrated Applications
  • Sensor and Observational Methods Development
  • Support for Communities of Practice and Engagement of Users and Decision-Makers

2) Identify its eventual application to improve environmental decision-making;

Water resource allocation manager, CAL dept food& ag (CDFA), cal resources agency (water, forestry, fish &game) –

Flag geospatial areas of concern and identifies the causes in order to make the policy solution clear

3) Identify the expected major tangible results and products;

California-specific Ecological Footprint suite (all components, biocap and EF) – geospatial allocation for ag

California-specific Water Footprint (all components) – geospatial allocation for groundwater

GRACE geospatial mapped for groundwater

PGI geospatial mapped

Website presenting the above products, contribute to existing databases (ie. GEOSS, data.gov, etc)

4) Describe concisely how the collaboration is expected to work; and

California state environmental and resource agencies – get data sources deliver in a form useful to decision makers

USGS – 2 year groundwater plan mapping, compare to GRACE data

NASA – ?

EEA –

Leading experts in

EPA internal – ORD ESRP, EPA Reg 9 Air, Water, CED, MTS

OEI

University of Irvine

With respect to ecological footprints, there is clear potential for collaboration with European Environmental Agency (EEA) which is working on a similar effort. This effort may be able to build upon the current collaboration between ORD’s Ecosystem Services Research Program and the Global Footprint Network.

5) Describe how the project progress will be measured/tracked.

II. Relevance to EPA Core Mission and Administrator’s Priorities (suggest ½ page)

  1. Describe how the project supports the Administrator’s priorities and EPA’s mission and goals and furthers the development of GEOSS, as laid out in the GEOSS 10-Year Implementation Plan:

EPA Mission: Protect human health and the environment

EPA Goals:

  • Clean Air and Global Climate Change (PDF)
  • Clean and Safe Water (PDF)
  • Land Preservation and Restoration (PDF)
  • Healthy Communities and Ecosystems (PDF)
  • Compliance and Environmental Stewardship (PDF)

GEOSS 10-Yr Implementation Plan

  • Reducing loss of life and property from natural and human-induced disasters;
  • Understanding environmental factors affecting human health and well-being;
  • Improving management of energy resources;
  • Understanding, assessing, predicting, mitigating, and adapting to climate variability and change;
  • Improving water resource management through better understanding of the water cycle;
  • Improving weather information, forecasting, and warning;
  • Improving the management and protection of terrestrial, coastal, and marine ecosystems;
  • Supporting sustainable agriculture and combating desertification;
  • Understanding, monitoring, and conserving biodiversity.

III. Approach and Implementation (suggest 4 ½ pages)

  1. Describe, in discrete tasks, what is involved in carrying out the project and the expected outputs/products/deliverables. Include a timeline.

Key Tasks / “In-kind” / AMI funds / Timeline (months)
6 / 12 / 18 / 24
Implement funding vehicles / 10,000 / / 3 months
Match data sources and policy decisions / 10,000 / 3 months
Exchange data with CA environmental and resource agencies / 30,000 / 60,000 / 1 year
QA all data received
Calculate Water Footprint / 20,000 / 4 months
Adjust data received for model inputs
Input data into model
Implement geospatial allocation of groundwater component
Automate for rapid resource consumption
GRACE / 20,000 / 20,000 / 6 months
Use existing data to produce CA GIS maps
Work with USGS regional staff to compare to GRACE data
Automate for rapid resource consumption /
Calculate Ecological Footprint / 50,000 / 1 year
Adjust data received for model inputs
Input data into model
Implement geospatial allocation of cropland footprint
Automate for rapid resource consumption
PGI / 10,000 / 15,000 / 6 months
Use existing data to produce CA GIS maps
Automate for rapid resource consumption
Design, implement, and roll out website – EPA Earth / 10,000 / 20,000 / series, 8 months
QA all model output data / 10,000
Project management & reporting / 10,000 / 15,000 / On-going
Total / $160,000 / $200,000
  1. Describe the approach and how the project contributes to the development of an interoperable, service-oriented system of systems, including how any products improve the linkages or fill a gap(s) between existing data systems.

The full proposal should explain the intended role of models in the project and what models will be used, where they come from, and how they will be “integrated.”

Dashboard functionality and geospatial visualization. The full proposal should explain the intended functionalities of the dashboard and address any planned geospatial visualization capabilities, and how these will leverage existing EPA efforts so that the wheel is not re-invented. Outputs from the dashboard should be described in more detail.

C. Explain whether/how the project will partner with OEI; leverage information technology (IT) and architecture; and use commercial “off the shelf,”open source software,and/or existing in-house IT components where feasible and appropriate.

As appropriate, the full proposal should discuss the use of open standards and open source software to facilitate future transferability

Google earth, EPA Earth, GFN methodology is public, ARC info, water footprint?

  1. Describe how the products or lessons learned may be transferred to other areas of application, and how the products or lessons may be scaled up from the specific application to a broader system.

Other states can easily adopt, expand sectors that are represented geospatially

E. Explain how the project will address relevant Agency quality assurance (QA) and/or Agency Information Quality Guidelines (IQG) requirements.

IV. Decision Making Context (suggest 1 ½ page)

  1. Describe the project’s expected near-term tangible results, outcome(s), and eventual application to improve environmental decision making at the Federal (i.e., US Government domestic or international), State, Local or Tribal level within a few years.

EPA Earth Application, creation of community of practice

B.Describe the project’s expected long-term tangible results and outcome(s) after completion of the project.

How will decision-makers use the outputs of the effort? The full proposal should elaborate and describe how this will work in practice. The full proposal should explain in more detail who the intended users are and provide a model for how users are expected to use the outputs to affect decisions and gain environmental results.

ID Critical policy issues – draw attention to areas that exist, help pinpoint the problem for effective policy solutions, inform the decision making

C. Each project should describe the format and mechanism by which scientific data products will be presented to decision making communities (including consideration of publication through Data.gov).

D. Identify key decision makers who are expected to be involved with the project and planned mechanisms for feedback throughout the project.

  • Connections with EPA research and information infrastructure. The preproposal does not show any strong linkages to other EPA work, including the Ecosystem Services Research Program and EPA’s existing information infrastructure. The full proposal should establish linkages and show synergies with other efforts.
  • USGS has an effort to map water demand. The full proposal should address collaboration with this USGS effort.

The proposal should better explain key milestones and the planned schedule and task interdependencies.

V. Budget, Work Tasks, and Leveraging (suggest 1 ½ pages)

A. Itemized Budget (include any equipment, supplies, contractual support, travel, costs associated with AMI reporting and sharing data/tools requirements, and any other major budget categories) and budget justification for the AMI funds requested from OSA.

B.Identify funding vehicle (e.g., contract, grant, IAG) and whether the funding vehicle already exists such that resources (i.e., S&T funds) reach the intended party(ies) this fiscal year to begin work. For existing contracts, identify the Contracting Officer and Project Officer. For existing grants, identify the Grants Specialist. If an existing funding vehicle does not exist, the proposal should provide a realistic schedule for establishing such a vehicle with the key milestones identified.

C.Identify the project’s critical work tasks including tasks performed in sequence and tasks done in parallel.

VI. Strategic Communications and Outreach (suggest 1 page)

A.Describe the communication strategy addressing how the project will collaborate with EPA Program Offices, EPA Regions, States, Tribes, or local governments to use its scientific products/tools in technology transfer and outreach to inform and improve environmental decision making.

VII. Appendix: (Does not count toward proposal’s 10 page maximum)

A. Literature references, if needed.

Proposal Submittal Process:

Full proposals must be submitted electronically to the EPA GEO Chair, Lisa Matthews () and Michael Bender () by10:00 am Eastern time on Monday, May 3, 2010.

Terms and Conditions:

Sharing Products

The products of GEOSS/AMI projects (e.g. progress reports, final reports, articles, source code, etc.) shall be deposited as electronic files in a project area, which will be created on the EPA Environmental Science Connector. The proposal must commit to this and include any associated costs in its project budget.

Reporting Requirements

Technical and financial progress reports will be due every four months with periodic reporting/ presentations tothe EPA GEO Committee via conference calls etc.

Quality Assurance and Information Quality Guidelines

Relevant Agency quality assurance (QA) requirements apply for projects that will collect new data or use existing data for an information product. For data and/or information products that will be disseminated or otherwise made accessible to the public, requirements under the Agency’s Information Quality Guidelines (IQG) may also apply. Please consult appropriate QA or IQG authority in your organization if you have questions.

Quality System Contacts and Web Sites:

EPA IQG Officers:

Integrated Decision Tools: Water and Ecological Footprints. Funding recommendation: $200,000. EPA GEO Contact: Vance Fong

Component Pre-proposals

#36California Footprint Dashboard [Sarah Risk and Don Hodge, R9, $300,000 requested, $200,000 recommended]

The EPA GEO Committee recommends that this pre-proposal be developed into a full proposal at the $200K level. The committee believes the strong regional and state involvement is a major asset. As can be expected, the pre-proposal lacked detail and raised a number of questions for reviewers. The full proposal should address these questions and issues:

1.How will decision-makers use the outputs of the effort? The full proposal should elaborate and describe how this will work in practice. The full proposal should explain in more detail who the intended users are and provide a model for how users are expected to use the outputs to affect decisions and gain environmental results.

2.Connections with EPA research and information infrastructure. The full proposal should establish linkages and show synergies with other efforts.

3.USGS has an effort to map water demand. The full proposal should address collaboration with this USGS effort.

4.Dashboard functionality and geospatial visualization. The full proposal should explain the intended functionalities of the dashboard and address any planned geospatial visualization capabilities, and how these will leverage existing EPA efforts so that the wheel is not re-invented. Outputs from the dashboard should be described in more detail.

5.The full proposal should explain the intended role of models in the project and what models will be used, where they come from, and how they will be “integrated.”

6.As appropriate, the full proposal should discuss the use of open standards and open source software to facilitate future transferability.

7.The proposal should better explain key milestones and the planned schedule and task interdependencies.

The committee recommends not using the term “dash board,” which may be associated with past efforts that were not entirely successful.

There was support expressed for the proposal especially the groundwater portion that builds on the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and significant investments by NASA and others. There is a need to coordinate with the USGS overall groundwater plan which is planned for couple of years later. Results from this project can inform the USGS plan.

The pre-proposal lays out an important potential interaction with Cal-EPA to develop a decision tool that is mutually beneficial to EPA and California. The project will help to connect the SECURE Water Act-authorized USGS water census activities and the state grant program contained in that act with existing EPA and California programs.

With respect to ecological footprints, there is clear potential for collaboration with European Environmental Agency (EEA) which is working on a similar effort. This effort may be able to build upon the current collaboration between ORD’s Ecosystem Services Research Program and the Global Footprint Network. It is consistent with the recommendations of the EPA Science Advisory Board presented in the May 2009 report, Valuing the Protection of Ecosystem Products & Services, which urges EPA to assemble or develop valuation methods that incorporate important ecological and biophysical effects.

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