Funding-NSF - Long
Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB); January 30, 2014
Agency
Name
National
Science Foundation
Synopsis
The Long Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB) Program supports the
generation of extended time series of data to address important questions in
evolutionary biology, ecology, and ecosystem science. Research areas include,
but are not limited to, the effects of natural selection or other evolutionary
processes on populations, communities, or ecosystems; the effects of
interspecific interactions that vary over time and space; population or
community dynamics for organisms that have extended life spans and long
turnover times; feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary processes; pools
of materials such as nutrients in soils that turn over at intermediate to
longer time scales; and external forcing functions such as climatic cycles that
operate over long return intervals.
The Program intends to support decadal projects. Funding for an initial,
5-year period requires submission of a preliminary proposal and, if invited,
submission of a full proposal that includes a 15-page project description.
Proposals for the second five years of support (renewal proposals) are limited
to an eight-page project description and do not require a preliminary proposal.
Continuation of an LTREB project beyond an initial ten year award will
require submission of a new preliminary proposal that presents a new decadal
research plan.
Successful LTREB proposals address three essential components:
A Decadal Research Plan that clearly articulates important
questions that cannot be addressed with data that have already been collected,
but could be answered if ten additional years of data were collected. This plan
is not a research timeline or management plan. It is a concise justification
for ten additional years of support in order to advance understanding of key
concepts, questions, or theories in environmental biology.
Core Data: LTREB proposals require that the author has
studied a particular phenomenon or process for at least six years up to the
present or for long enough to generate a contemporary time series that contains
six data points. These data constitute Core Data on which the new project
should be based, and analysis of these data should generate new questions, on
the same phenomenon or process, that provide the focus
of the LTREB project.
A Plan for Data Management and Dissemination that details
information management and plans for data sharing with the broader research
community and the interested public. Data from long-term research projects have
value beyond the peer-reviewed and other publications generated by the
investigators collecting the data.
Specific review criteria for LTREB proposals and renewals are
explained in Section VI of the current program solicitation. Prospective
applicants are advised to read this solicitation carefully.
All proposals submitted to the LTREB program are co-reviewed by
participating Clusters in the Division of Environmental Biology: Ecosystem
Science, Population and Community Ecology, and Evolutionary Processes.
Proposals must address topics supported by these programs. Researchers who are
uncertain about the suitability of their project for the LTREB Program are
encouraged to contact the cognizant program director.
Beginning
in January 2014, the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS) will no
longer accept proposals submitted to the LTREB solicitation. Long-term projects
that address questions of a) development, mechanisms, adaptive value, or
evolutionary history of behavior, b) mechanisms and processes mediating
antagonistic and beneficial symbioses, c) growth, development, stress
adaptation mechanisms, energetics and metabolism, or other physiological
processes, and d) structural and physiological traits that underlie organisms'
capacities to live in various environments will no longer be supported through
LTREB. Core IOS programs supporting all of these areas will entertain proposals
based on long-term data http://nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503623&org=IOS&from=home.
Announcement
Number:
NSF 14-507
Due
Date: Preliminary Proposal: January 30, 2014;
Full Proposal: August 01, 2014
Link
to Full Announcement
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2014/nsf14507/nsf14507.htm?WT.mc_id=USNSF_25&WT.mc_ev=click
Contact
Information
Saran
Twombly, Program Director, Division
of Environmental Biology, telephone: (703) 292-8133, email: stwombly@nsf.gov