Cooperative Agreement for affiliated Partner with the Rocky Mountain Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit

The USGS is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for research in improving the invasive species habitat tool (INHABIT) to deliver manager requested products to inform invasive species management. The research will be used to further develop the delivery to practitioners, ensuring they have the best available science to inform decision making [EO 14303 – Restoring Gold Standard Science (May 23, 2025)].Habitat suitability models can inform management actions including search and development of watch lists. Search activities are required to identify locations of invasive species before treatment actions can be taken. Other products such as phenology models of species can help determine timing of actions at these locations. Watch lists can inform early detection activities at local, regional, and national scales. Actions taken before a species has become well-established, facilitated by early detection, can mitigate impacts from invasive species at a lower cost and lead to potential eradication compared to longer established invasive species. INHABIT provides information to inform development of these lists for management areas across the United States. We can continue to improve both the development of these lists and the delivery of the information. INHABIT conducts virtual roundtables with end users from federal, state, and other organizations dealing with invasive species to obtain input on products. Implementing requested additions and changes produces a webtool used by practitioners from these agencies and organizations to inform management actions against invasive species including fire promoting invasives [EO 14308 - Empowering Commonsense Wildfire Prevention and Response (June 12, 2025)], those that may be invading across the border [EO 14165 – Securing our Borders (January 20, 2025)], and protecting America’s land and water resources. The U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Fort Collins Science Center is offering a cooperative-agreement opportunity to a CESU partner that has the capability to conduct research and implement changes to INHABIT to meet the needs of these practitioners. The recipient should leverage collaborations to incorporate expertise in invasion ecology, statistical programming, remote sensing, and web application development into a large existing project on the geographic distribution of plants in the United States. Current USGS research interests include (but are not limited to) (1) the integration of new features into the INHABIT webtool, (2) refining the development of invasive species watch lists, (3) investigate ways of describing uncertainty in modeled products within INHABIT, and (4) develop plan for the next version of INHABIT. The outcome of a successful agreement will be research products integrated into INHABIT that help DOI and other land-management partners make decisions related to the management of invasive species. Through this CESU agreement, the federal and state university partners will cooperate fully in development of a research program that will produce final products within INHABIT to be used in support of land management decisions. The cooperation of the USGS and its CESU partner brings a combination of expertise to address this objective that is greater than that possessed by either partner on its own.