MM-23-03: Accounting for Scale Bias in Marine Minerals Studies | M24AS00363

Opportunity Information: Apply for M24AS00363

MM-23-03: Accounting for Scale Bias in Marine Minerals Studies is a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) grant opportunity focused on improving how marine minerals environmental studies are designed, analyzed, and interpreted when spatial and temporal scale issues can distort conclusions. BOEM notes that many past BOEM-funded Marine Minerals Program (MMP) field studies have relied on data collected within a limited, often ecologically arbitrary footprint such as a dredge track or lease area, and typically over short time windows (about 2 to 4 years). Those studies can be very useful for describing site-specific conditions before and after dredging, but they can be difficult to interpret beyond the immediate study area or time period. In practice, trying to “scale up” to regional questions or “scale down” to finer ecological patterns often requires integrating external datasets (for example, regional species distributions or oceanographic stratification), which past studies have not always been able to do because of scope, data access, and budget constraints. BOEM is using this moment, when multiple robust pre- and post-activity datasets now exist, to re-examine earlier work and set clearer expectations and methods for future studies.

The core problem the opportunity targets is scale bias: the risk that the scale built into study design, sampling strategy, and statistical analysis (whether explicitly planned or implicitly assumed) can influence results and lead to misinterpretation. BOEM wants a structured evaluation of how well the spatial and temporal scales of MMP research and BOEM-authorized dredging activities match, or mismatch, the real-world scales at which habitats and organisms are distributed and the scales at which natural processes operate (such as storms or other episodic events). The intent is practical: produce guidance that helps BOEM plan future studies at the appropriate scale, or at nested scales, so that environmental assessments and decisions are based on evidence that aligns with ecological reality rather than convenience boundaries like lease polygons or single survey footprints.

The work described in the opportunity includes several connected objectives. One major task is to define the spatial and temporal scales of dredging disturbance and the potential area and duration of impacts, ranging from the smallest unit (a single dredge pass) to broad regional extents like the entire Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico Outer Continental Shelf. BOEM also wants those dredging-related scales described alongside other common ocean uses and disturbances, such as fishing activity or storms, so the relative magnitude and frequency of dredging effects can be contextualized. Another task is to clarify key supporting concepts that are often used inconsistently across studies, including terms like disturbance, impact, response, and resilience, with the goal of making future study designs and interpretations more comparable and defensible.

The opportunity further calls for identifying the habitats, functional guilds, and organisms most relevant to marine minerals dredging, and determining the scales at which those ecological components are affected or not affected. This is tied to a more applied analytical component: resampling existing datasets or synthesizing broader regional datasets to demonstrate how different choices of analytical scale can change the story a study tells. For example, patterns that appear strong at the dredge-site footprint might weaken, disappear, or reverse when viewed across a larger spatial context, and short-term signals might look very different when evaluated over longer time frames that include natural variability. The expected outcome is not just critique, but actionable recommendations for future research methods and models that explicitly address scale.

A central deliverable is a methods paper that lays out the data requirements and a proposed workflow for identifying and accounting for scale bias in MMP studies. This methods paper is also expected to characterize the spatial and temporal scales at which BOEM-authorized dredging could plausibly produce impacts, which then becomes a framework for evaluating whether past and future monitoring designs are properly aligned. After developing the methods approach, the project would review existing fish and habitat datasets from relevant BOEM studies and consider complementary data sources from partners such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the National Marine Fisheries Service, state agencies, and potentially local communities. If those datasets are sufficiently rich, the project would reanalyze them to explore spatial and temporal relationships at multiple scales and use those findings to refine best-practice recommendations for study design, sampling, and analysis going forward.

Administratively, this is a discretionary funding opportunity from BOEM under CFDA 15.423, using a Cooperative Agreement as the funding instrument and categorized under Environment. The opportunity number is M24AS00363, with an original closing date of 2024-07-25 and an award ceiling of $200,000. Eligible applicants are listed as public and state-controlled institutions of higher education and “others,” but the description specifies that it will be issued as a single-source cooperative agreement with Louisiana State University through the Gulf Coast Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (GC-CESU). In practical terms, that means BOEM has already identified the intended partner for this work and is using the cooperative agreement structure to support a collaborative project that directly informs how BOEM plans and evaluates marine minerals environmental studies in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.

• The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in the environment sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "MM-23-03: Accounting for Scale Bias in Marine Minerals Studies" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.423.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-06-04.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-07-25. (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 $200,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Others.

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