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Research Funding Opportunities
Discussion of the Announcement of Opportunity process and links to the AO Resource Kit
OE has an annual funding opportunity to support its
mission, consistent with NOAA’s Strategic Plan (http://www.nrc.noaa.gov), to search, investigate,
and document poorly-known and unknown areas of the ocean and Great Lakes. OE accomplishes this through interdisciplinary exploration, in order to advance and disseminate knowledge
of the ocean environment and its physical, chemical, biological, and marine
archaeological resources which furthers ocean education and ocean
literacy.
As part of this effort, a competitive peer review process seeks bold, innovative proposals with interdisciplinary approaches and objectives which fall within one (or
more) of three categories: Ocean Exploration, Marine Archaeology, and Ocean
Exploration Education.
If you would like more information please visit the Ocean Explorer Web site (http://www.oceanexplorer.noaa.gov) to see past and present OE-funded activities. You can find more background on the funding program in the Announcement of Opportunity Resource Kit.
Ocean Exploration
Interdisciplinary expeditions act as a keystone of OE’s Ocean Exploration component, with scientists from multiple
fields jointly exploring poorly known or unknown ocean areas. The
characteristics of the habitat, region or discipline should suggest a potential
for bold, new discoveries. OE strongly encourages scientists to collaborate by
submitting a single proposal for a multi-disciplinary expedition. It also encourages collaborations to include international representation.
Specific thematic priorities within Ocean Exploration include:
• Survey ridges, canyons, faults, seamounts and other key features and habitats of economic, hazardous, scientific or cultural importance using multibeam, sidescan sonar, or other seafloor or water column mapping technologies;
• Discover and describe new species and new resources, both living and non-living, including those of economic importance and/or benefit to humanity, e.g.,, natural products for pharmaceutical or biotechnology application, new hydrate or seep systems or fish stocks;
• Describe poorly-known or discover and describe unknown communities of organisms displaying novel relationships with their environments;
• Describe poorly-known or discover and describe unknown physical or chemical processes, e.g., deep ocean currents, chemical and/or heat plumes from hydrothermal vents or other ocean phenomenon;
• Deploy in-situ instrumentation at poorly-known or unknown locations to explore in the time domain; and
• Develop and/or utilize new tools, probes, sensors, and systems that will increase the pace and efficiency at which living and non-living resources are discovered, and uncover processes with far-ranging implications for the study of the earth as a whole.
Marine Archaeology
OE supports exploration and discovery of significant maritime heritage sites, emphasizing the early phases of field archaeology: searching, locating, evaluating or inventorying sites. Submerged, previously subaerial, landscapes, shipwrecks, aircraft, and other maritime cultural sites are of interest. Projects may occur in any of the oceans, coasts or Great Lakes regions. NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration supports standards for conducting marine archaeological projects and expeditions such as those enumerated in the Annex Rules of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage.
Ocean Exploration Education
The Office of OE strives to engage broad audiences to enhance America’s environmental literacy through the excitement of ocean discovery. Increasing this literacy requires high-quality, effective collaborations between ocean explorers and America’s teachers. NOAA is forming such collaborations to reach out in new ways to the public to improve the literacy of learners with respect to ocean issues. OE funds the development of educational products to enable teachers (grades 6-12) to bring NOAA science into classrooms throughout the country (curriculum is available online at http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/edu/curriculum/welcome.html).
