Environmental Studies Planning

Science for Informed Decisions

BOEM must comply with numerous environmental statutes, regulations, and executive orders to carry out its mission. BOEM is dedicated to acquiring and using the highest quality scientific information in support of Bureau decisions. To that end, the Environmental Studies Program (ESP) employs a rigorous planning, review and procurement process to meet the nation’s environmental research needs for Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) resource assessments.

The ESP in Headquarters and Regional program offices prepare the annual Studies Development Plans (SDP) to cover a three-year planning period. The plan includes brief study descriptions or profiles that describe proposed studies for the upcoming fiscal year and for one successive year. These studies are designed to collect the information necessary to meet the needs of the users, including BOEM scientists, rule writers, modelers, and decision makers. Proposed studies are evaluated for program relevance, programmatic timeliness, and scientific merit. Additional program oversight is provided by the National Academies Committee on Environmental Science and Assessment for Ocean Energy Management to provide independent, scientifically credible and objective information on issues relevant to BOEM’s environmental studies and assessment activities and to support discussions on relevant issues. Collectively, these inputs contribute to the development of research plans.

Current and Previous SDPs

While the SDP serves a primarily internal planning function, it is a publicly available document and is used to communicate the proposed studies both internally within BOEM and externally with potential partners and other interested parties. The SDP and resulting studies undergo peer review at several stages to ensure the quality of the work proposed. When completed, the annual SDP forms the basis for the National Studies List (NSL).

To formulate the NSL, the offices in each Region and Headquarters develop a priority order for the many studies proposed in their SDP's. These lists are evaluated again by Headquarters, principally considering program relevance, timing, and budgetary constraints. Discussions are conducted with each of the program offices and when consensus is achieved, the NSL is recommended for approval. Once the annual appropriations for the Department have been approved, studies on the NSL are procured via competitive procurements, cooperative agreements with a State institution or university, or through inter/intra agency agreements with other Federal agencies.

It is important to note that the NSL is subject to change throughout the course of the year as conditions warrant and due to budgetary constraints.

The Environmental Studies Program (ESP) anticipates pursuing awards in Fiscal year 2015 for projects encompassing all scientific disciplines and on all coasts of the United States, listed in the following table. The information in this table is for planning purposes only and all awards are subject to change and availability of funds. As individual project announcements become available, the Study Titles will be linked to the appropriate website for application or proposal information:

FY 2015 New Starts Planned for the Environmental Studies Program
Region	Study Title	Tentative Funding Mechanism
Gulf of Mexico	Explosive Removal of Structures: Fisheries Impact Assessment	Competitive
Gulf of Mexico	Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) Program for the Northern Gulf of Mexico	Competitive
Gulf of Mexico	Chemical Products Used in Gulf of Mexico Oil & Gas Operations: Inventory, Disposal, and Risks	Competitive
Gulf of Mexico	Interdisciplinary Research at the Site of Three 19th Century Shipwrecks: the Monterrey Shipwrecks	Inter/Intra Agency Agreement
Gulf of Mexico	Fugitive Emissions Update – Component Count and Amounts	Competitive
Gulf of Mexico	Deepwater Coral and Chemosynthetic Atlas and Modeling Program: Gulf of Mexico	Inter/Intra Agency Agreement
Gulf of Mexico	Sponsorship of the 2015 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science Conference	Sole Source
Atlantic	Wind Energy Development on the Atlantic OCS: The Identification of Port Modifications and their Environmental and Socioeconomic Consequences	Competitive
Atlantic	Endangered Atlantic Sturgeon Habitat Use in Mid-Atlantic Wind Energy Areas	Cooperative Agreement
Atlantic	Understanding Whale Presence in the Virginia Offshore Wind Energy Area	Cooperative Agreement
Atlantic	Quantitative Assessment of Spatially-Explicit Social Values Relative to Wind Energy Areas	Inter/Intra Agency Agreement
Atlantic	Describing Marine Wildlife Distribution and Movement Patterns on the South Atlantic OCS	Competitive
Atlantic	Comprehensive Seafloor Substrate Mapping and Model Validation in the Atlantic	Inter/Intra Agency Agreement
Alaska	Initiating an Arctic Marine Biodiversity Observing Network (AMBON) for Ecosystem Monitoring	Inter/Intra Agency Agreement
Alaska	Development of a Very High-resolution Regional Circulation Model of Beaufort Sea Nearshore Areas	Cooperative Agreement
Alaska	Coastal Habitat Maps: Closing Spatial Gaps in ShoreZone Imagery and Data for the Cook Inlet Area	Competitive
Alaska	Synthesis of Sub-Sea Physical Environmental Data for the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas	Competitive
Alaska	Traditional Knowledge Implementation: Accessing Arctic Community Panels of Subject Matter Experts	TBD
Alaska	Estimation of Abundance and Demographic Rates of Pacific Walruses Using a Genetics-based Mark-Recapture Approach	Inter/Intra Agency Agreement
Alaska	Field Evaluation of an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) for Studying Cetacean Distribution, Density, and Habitat Use in the Arctic	Inter/Intra Agency Agreement
Alaska	Subtidal and Intertidal Habitats and Invertebrate Biota in Lower Cook Inlet, Alaska	Inter/Intra Agency Agreement
Alaska	Cetacean Distribution, Abundance, and Ecology in Cook Inlet	Competitive
Alaska	Alaska Marine Science Symposium (AMSS) 2015	Sole Source
Pacific	Archaeological and Biological Assessment of Submerged Landforms off the Pacific Coast	Inter/Intra Agency Agreement
Pacific	Data Synthesis and High-resolution Predictive Modeling of Marine Bird Spatial Distributions on the Pacific OCS	Inter/Intra Agency Agreement
Pacific	BOEM-MARINe (Multi-Agency Rocky Intertidal Network)	Cooperative Agreement
Pacific	Synthesis of Pacific Platform Research	Cooperative Agreement
Pacific	A Demonstration Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (BON) for Ecosystem Monitoring	Cooperative Agreement
Pacific	Consequences of Ocean Energy Projects to Productivity and Trophic Structure in Marine and Coastal Habitats	Cooperative Agreement
Pacific	Cross-shelf Habitat Suitability Modeling	Inter/Intra Agency Agreement
National	Propagation Characteristics of High-Frequency Sounds Emitted During High-Resolution Geophysical Surveys: Tank Testing	Inter/Intra Agency Agreement
National	Propagation Characteristics of High-Frequency Sounds Emitted During High-Resolution Geophysical Surveys: Open Water Testing	Competitive
National	Understanding Propagation of Seismic Noise and Effects to Marine Mammals at Larger Temporal and Spatial Scales	Competitive
National	Development of a Decision Support Tool to Reduce Sea Turtle Dredging Entrainment Risk	Competitive
National	Managing Dredge Impacts by Optimizing the Use of Sand Resources	Competitive
National	Assessment of the Cumulative Effects of Anthropogenic Stressors on Marine Mammals	Sole Source
National	Sediment Sorting During Coastal Restoration Projects: Implications for Resource Management, Environmental Impacts, and Multiple Use Conflicts	Inter/Intra Agency Agreement