Developing a Missouri River Sediment Transport Capacity Function | W81EWF 24 SOI 0019

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81EWF 24 SOI 0019

Developing a Missouri River Sediment Transport Capacity Function (Funding Opportunity Number W81EWF 24 SOI 0019) is a US Army Corps of Engineers Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) cooperative agreement aimed at improving how sediment movement is predicted in the Missouri River. The core scientific question is how bed material loads (the portion of sediment moving along or near the riverbed), hydraulic roughness, and bedform regimes (features like dunes, ripples, and plane beds that form on the channel bottom) change in response to key hydraulic controls such as water temperature, shear stress, stream power, channel slope, and flow velocity. In practical terms, the project is trying to connect measurable flow and channel conditions to the way the river carries and reshapes its bed sediment, which is central to navigation, habitat management, channel stability, and engineering decisions along a large alluvial river system.

The technical work has two main deliverables. First, the award recipient must derive a sediment transport capacity function specifically for bed material load using the best available datasets. The notice highlights USGS suspended sediment concentration and load records, along with the Missouri River 2014 sediment data collection effort, as foundational sources. While suspended sediment and bed material load are not the same thing, combining long-term monitoring (often stronger on suspended sediment) with targeted field campaigns (often richer in bed and near-bed measurements) can support a more defensible transport-capacity relationship for the system. The intent is to produce a function that links sediment transport capacity to controlling hydraulic variables, capturing how transport rates shift across different flow regimes and environmental conditions.

Second, the project must produce a bedform and roughness predictor algorithm for the Missouri River. Roughness is a major driver of water-surface slope, energy losses, and stage-discharge relationships, and bedforms are one of the dominant sources of roughness in sandy alluvial rivers. A predictor algorithm in this context generally means a method, model, or set of equations/rules that uses hydraulic inputs (for example, shear stress, Froude number, grain size, or stream power) to estimate what bedform regime is likely present and what hydraulic roughness it implies. Because bedforms can shift quickly with changing discharge and sediment supply, having a Missouri River-specific predictor can improve hydrodynamic and sediment modeling beyond generic formulas developed on other rivers or in laboratory settings.

A key requirement is validation and publication-quality documentation. The opportunity explicitly requires the recipient to demonstrate that the developed algorithms can effectively predict observed data, and to do so in a peer-reviewed journal article coauthored by USACE. That means the work is expected to include clear methodology, calibration and validation steps, performance metrics, and a transparent comparison between predictions and measurements, not just a conceptual model. The journal article must discuss both the methodology and results, so the final product is intended to be reproducible and scientifically defensible, with USACE directly involved in authorship.

Coordination expectations are spelled out and relatively structured. There will be two in-person meetings between USACE and the award recipient: a kickoff meeting at the start and a final presentation at the end. In addition, monthly virtual meetings are required, indicating ongoing collaboration, progress tracking, and likely iterative review of data handling, model development choices, and manuscript preparation. This kind of meeting cadence usually signals that USACE wants to stay closely aligned with technical decisions and ensure the outputs can be operationally useful, not just academically interesting.

Eligibility is limited. This opportunity is restricted to non-federal partners of the Great Rivers Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Unit (CESU), which means applicants must be part of that CESU network and must be non-federal entities. The funding instrument is a cooperative agreement, which typically indicates substantial federal involvement during the project (consistent with the coauthoring requirement and the recurring meetings). The opportunity is categorized under discretionary funding for science and technology and other research and development, with CFDA number 12.630, and it anticipates a single award.

From an administrative standpoint, the notice emphasizes disclosure requirements around current and pending support. Applicants are warned that disclosures made in the application can affect eligibility, and ERDC may request updated current and pending support information both before award and throughout the performance period. Those updates will be reviewed and could result in discontinuation of funding, so the program is signaling that conflicts, overcommitments, or other support-related issues will be actively monitored. The announcement also states that religious organizations may compete on equal footing with secular organizations for federal financial assistance, consistent with Executive Order 13798.

Key logistics and funding details include an original closing date of 2024-06-06, an award ceiling of $159,000, and an expectation of one award. Overall, the grant supports applied river engineering and sediment science: building Missouri River-specific predictive tools for bed material transport and bedform-driven roughness, demonstrating that those tools match real observations, and delivering the work in a jointly authored peer-reviewed publication supported by sustained coordination with USACE.

• The Engineer Research and Development Center in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Developing a Missouri River Sediment Transport Capacity Function" 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 2024-04-05.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-06-06. (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 $159,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

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