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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. 

Letters of Intent are due on Thursday, November 2, 2023 by 11:59 p.m. ET. Full applications are due on Thursday, February 15, 2024 by 11:59 p.m. ET.

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

Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP)

Funder:
NOAA/Climate Program Office

Deadline:
November 21, 2022

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.

WaterSMART Drought Response Program

Funder:
DOI/Bureau of Reclamation

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Drought Response Program supports a proactive approach to drought by providing assistance to water managers to develop and update comprehensive drought plans and implement projects that will build long-term resiliency to drought.

In May 2022, the Bureau of Reclamation announced a funding opportunity for FY 2023 WaterSMART Water and Energy Efficiency Grants to allocate Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding and FY 2023 appropriations.

The FY 2023 application period closed on July 28, 2022. 

 

Tribal Climate Resilience Annual Awards Program

Funder:
DOI/Bureau of Indian Affairs

Deadline:
October 13, 2023

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. 

Application Deadline: 11:59 p.m. Eastern on October 13, 2023

NOAA Climate Resilience Regional Challenge

Funder:
NOAA/Office for Coastal Management

Deadline:
February 13, 2024

Approximately $575 million is available for projects that build the resilience of coastal communities to extreme weather and other impacts of climate change, including sea level rise and drought. The focus of this grant program is on collaborative approaches to achieving resilience in coastal regions. Proposed projects should address risk reduction, regional collaboration, and equity, and build enduring capacity for adaptation

Eligible applicants include coastal states, territories, counties, cities, tribes, and tribal organizations; public or private nonprofit organizations; and institutions of higher education.

Letters of intent are due by August 21, 2023. Full applications are due by February 13, 2024.

Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities

Funder:
DHS/Federal Emergency Management Agency

Deadline:
January 27, 2023

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.