Lower Mississippi River Sediment and Ecohydrology Studies | W81EWF20SOI0011

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81EWF20SOI0011

The "Lower Mississippi River Sediment and Ecohydrology Studies" opportunity is a US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) cooperative agreement aimed at strengthening the technical foundation used to manage the Lower Mississippi River for navigation, flood risk reduction, and ecosystem restoration. It sits within the larger Mississippi River Geomorphology and Potamology (MRGandP) Program, a coordinated effort across multiple USACE districts (St. Louis, Memphis, Vicksburg, and New Orleans) under the Mississippi Valley Division, with research support from the Engineer Research and Development Center. The core idea is that two centuries of engineered modifications (levees, floodways, channel improvements, meander cutoffs, river training structures, dredging, reservoirs, and other basin changes) have interacted with powerful natural drivers (major floods and droughts, hurricanes, tectonics, geologic controls, climate variability and climate change, and relative sea-level rise). Because the river’s shape, sediment dynamics, and floodplain ecosystems are all tied together, USACE is looking to improve scientific consensus and decision-ready tools for understanding how the system is changing and what that means for future management.

The anticipated work is organized into three connected objectives. The first focuses on refining and building a clearer consensus around sediment transport and sediment loads in the Lower Mississippi and Atchafalaya river system. Recent studies have produced conflicting conclusions about long-term trends in suspended sediment, in part because they use different datasets and methods. For example, one approach (WRTDS: Weighted Regressions on Time, Discharge and Season) has suggested declining suspended sediment in recent decades, while other analyses indicate no meaningful trend or even a slight increase since the early 1990s. The grant work under this objective is meant to sort through those differences, quantify uncertainty in both data and methods, and translate that uncertainty into something managers and modelers can actually use. The scope may include reviewing available sediment datasets, comparing analytical approaches, assessing surrogate methods that estimate sediment loads using proxies like discharge or turbidity, and better describing hysteresis effects (where sediment concentrations and even water surface elevations can follow different paths on the rising versus falling limbs of floods). The notice also signals interest in convening a focused workshop of leading researchers to work toward a consensus publication that captures the state of the science and clarifies why results diverge.

The second objective moves beyond suspended sediment to develop a more complete sediment budget for the Lower Mississippi River. The opportunity notes that existing budgets have largely emphasized measured suspended sediment, which primarily represents fine material (wash load). However, the movement and delivery of bed material is more complex and is considered essential for understanding channel form, stability, and long-term morphological change. This objective calls for a broader accounting that integrates multiple sediment sources and drivers, including bank caving, tributary inputs, and watershed contributions, and ties them to the river’s energy regime using measures such as slope and stream power derived from long-term gaging stations. A key expectation is to relate historical changes in sediment supply and stream power to observed morphological trends, producing a conceptual sediment budget that better explains past behavior and improves understanding of how sediment is conveyed through the modern engineered river system. The intended outcome is not just another dataset, but a coherent, system-level explanation that corrects common oversights in the literature regarding bed material loads.

The third objective is about building an eco-geomorphology approach for assessing and managing the Lower Mississippi River, explicitly linking geomorphology, hydrology, and ecology across the channel and floodplain. Rather than treating physical river processes and ecological responses as separate fields, the work would assemble an interdisciplinary technical study team to develop an integrated assessment and research plan grounded in established river science concepts and informed by historical trends, recent research, and professional experience on the Lower Mississippi. This objective culminates in producing a framework for a long-term basic research program in eco-geomorphology, along with a workshop that brings together experts in geomorphology, sediment transport, hydrology/hydraulics, and aquatic ecology. The final deliverables are described as a conceptual framework document, workshop proceedings, and draft statements of work that lay out a sustained research program designed to identify key knowledge gaps and support inference across disciplines, so that engineering and restoration decisions can be made with a more realistic understanding of how the river-floodplain system functions.

Administratively, the opportunity is issued by the Department of the Army, USACE, as a discretionary cooperative agreement in the science and technology/research and development category (CFDA 12.630). The posted award ceiling is $450,000. Eligibility is restricted: applicants must be non-federal partners of the Gulf Coast Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Unit (CESU). The funding opportunity number is W81EWF20SOI0011, and the original closing date listed is 2020-04-10.

• The Dept. of the Army -- Corps of Engineers in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Lower Mississippi River Sediment and Ecohydrology Studies" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 12.630.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2020-02-21.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2020-04-10. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $450,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

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