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Drought in Action

Funding Opportunities

NIDIS and its partners offer a variety of funding opportunities related to drought early warning research across many sectors and fields, including science, education, and technology.

Competitive Funding Opportunities

These featured competitive funding opportunities support advancing drought early warning across a variety of sectors and are offered by NIDIS and partnering agencies and organizations.

Coping with Drought Research Competition
Funder:
NOAA/National Integrated Drought Information System

Deadline:
February 15, 2024

NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) has announced approximately $2 million in funding for projects to support tribal drought resilience as part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda.

The Climate Program Office FY 2024 NIDIS Tribal Drought Resilience with Inflation Reduction Act Support competition will focus on addressing current and future drought risk on tribal lands across the Western U.S. to support decision-making and build tribal drought resilience in a changing climate. 

Applications were due on Thursday, February 15, 2024.

For more information, visit the NIDIS Coping with Drought web page.

Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP)
Funder:
NOAA/Climate Program Office

Part of NOAA's Climate Program Office, the Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP) Program hosts annual funding competitions soliciting proposals on climate-related topics. NIDIS supports drought-focused funding competitions through MAPP, focusing on improving drought monitoring and prediction systems.

The FY 2023 MAPP competition will focus on the critical state of the western hydroclimate and advancing our understanding and capabilities to address the challenges posed by variability and change in that hydroclimate. 

The FY23 application period closed on November 21, 2022. For more information, contact Dan Barrie at daniel.barrie@noaa.gov.

Inflation Reduction Act Community Change Grants Program
Funder:
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Deadline:
November 21, 2024

EPA’s new Environmental and Climate Justice Community Change Grants program has announced a Notice of Funding Opportunity for approximately $2 billion in Inflation Reduction Act funding. This funding is available to support community-driven projects that build capacity for communities to tackle environmental and climate justice challenges, strengthen their climate resilience, and advance clean energy.

Applications packages will be accepted on a rolling basis and must be submitted by Thursday, November 21, 2024 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

 

Forest Service IRA Forest Landowner Support: Tribal Access to Emerging Private Markets for Climate Mitigation and Forest Resilience
Funder:
USDA/U.S. Forest Service

Deadline:
August 21, 2024

The Biden-Harris Administration is investing $20 million to support federally recognized Tribes and Alaska Native corporations and villages. The funding, made possible by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and distributed through competitive grants administered by the USDA Forest Service, will help recipients access emerging private markets for forest resilience, climate mitigation, water quality, carbon sequestration and more. 

The deadline for proposals is Wednesday, August 21, 2024 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Tribal Climate Resilience Annual Awards Program
Funder:
DOI/Bureau of Indian Affairs

The Bureau of Indian Affairs' Branch of Tribal Climate Resilience (TCR) provides financial support for federally-recognized Tribal Nations and authorized Tribal organizations through a competitive funding opportunity to build Tribal resilience capacity. On July 19, 2023, the Department of the Interior announced the Fiscal Year 2023 BIA TCR Annual Awards Program investment in Tribal communities. TCR will make available approximately $120 million in funding for Tribes and tribal organizations to address the unique impacts of climate change affecting vulnerable tribal communities. 

The FY 2023 application period closed on October 13, 2023.

Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities
Funder:
DHS/Federal Emergency Management Agency

Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) is a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) pre-disaster hazard mitigation program that supports states, local communities, tribal nations, and territories as they undertake hazard mitigation projects reducing the risks they face from disasters and natural hazards.

The FY 2022 application period for the BRIC grant program closed on January 27, 2023.

Additional Funding Opportunities
16
NIDIS-funded Coping with Drought and MAPP projects in FY 2020
$7.7 million
in funding for FY 2020 Coping with Drought and MAPP projects (over the projects' lifetime)
15 years
since NIDIS began funding the Coping with Drought competition in 2007

Featured FY 2022 Coping with Drought Research

Since 2012, NIDIS has funded more than 120 grants for research projects advancing drought early warning across a variety of sectors through the Coping with Drought research competition and the Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP) Program's funding competitions, in addition to supporting other drought research across sectors and regions. Below are examples of research NIDIS is currently supporting through the FY 2022 Coping with Drought competition. View all FY 2022 Coping with Drought awardees.

Microscope icon, representing drought research.

Connecting Ecological Drought Monitoring Tools with Natural Resource Stakeholders in Montana

Principal Investigators:
Jason Otkin, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Jamie McEvoy, Montana State University; Tonya Haigh, University of Nebraska – Lincoln

Montana and surrounding states have experienced two severe drought events during the past five years that were characterized by rapid development during the growing season. In response to the magnitude and diversity of impacts during these droughts, the Montana state government initiated a two-year collaborative process to update the state-level drought response plan. During this project, the research team will develop new ecologically relevant drought monitoring tools and assess the ability of traditional drought indicators to accurately represent ecological drought conditions. Extensive social science tasks will allow the team to contribute valuable information and guidance to the Montana drought advisory committee regarding the timing of management decisions made by natural resource stakeholders, the existing tools and trigger points that are used when making those decisions, and how new ecological drought monitoring tools could be incorporated into their decision-making process.

Microscope icon, representing drought research.

Chími nukárihihi (Let’s Get Ready): Collaborative Climate Change and Drought Response Monitoring and Implementation

Principal Investigators:
Analisa Tripp and Colleen Rossier, Karuk Department of Natural Resources

Through this project, the Karuk Tribe aims to improve Karuk socio-ecological resilience to drought by (a) increasing access to drought-relevant data for Karuk Tribal managers and (b) increasing Karuk community engagement in research, monitoring, and management activities to better integrate Indigenous and Western science and management systems and achieve more rapid awareness of and response to drought impacts across the landscape. The project team will build out a drought resilience data portal to enable Karuk natural resources managers to access geospatial data in a user-friendly way. The team will also build on the previous five years of Agroecosystem Climate Assessment and Food Grove plot data collection, which has resulted in baseline data of cultural food, fiber, and medicinal plant focal species that are important for Karuk culture. 

Microscope icon, representing drought research.

Projecting Socio-Ecological Impacts of Drought in Southwestern Ecosystems to Prioritize Restoration Initiatives

Principal Investigator:
Sara Souther, Northern Arizona University

The Southwest U.S. is experiencing more frequent and severe droughts, leading to unprecedented die-offs of foundational plant species across ecosystems. For Native American tribes, the loss or movement of plants used for food, ceremonies, medicine, or art imperils cultural practices and traditional life ways tied to those species. 

This project will combine information on social connections to natural areas with ecological data, to identify ecocultural hotspots that are vulnerable to drought. Using this information, the team will identify priority sites for restoration treatments that mitigate ecocultural losses.

Microscope icon, representing drought research.

Building a More Drought-Resilient Urban Forest Ecosystem

Principal Investigators:
Christine Rollinson, The Morton Arboretum; M. Ross Alexander, The University of Chicago; Trent Ford, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign

The goal of this project is to strengthen drought and climate resilience in urban forests by extending existing drought monitoring and early warning systems to urban settings. The project team will leverage strong existing collaborations among scientists, practitioners, and decision-makers in the Chicago region and analyze historical and new real-time data streams to improve our understanding of drought impacts on urban trees and forests. This project will produce science-based, multi-tiered action strategies for improving drought resilience in the near term and future climate adaptation using methods and frameworks that will be extensible to other cities.