Developing a Fire History for the Eastern Portion of Great Smoky Mountains National Park | P18AS00447

Opportunity Information: Apply for P18AS00447

The grant opportunity titled "Developing a Fire History for the Eastern Portion of Great Smoky Mountains National Park" (Funding Opportunity Number P18AS00447) was offered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, as a discretionary cooperative agreement focused on natural resources work. The project centers on reconstructing the long-term fire history of the wetter, eastern half of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, an area where fire is often less visible in the modern landscape compared to drier zones but can still experience severe events. By building a clearer picture of past fire occurrence and patterns, the National Park Service aimed to better understand how unusual or representative recent extreme fires are, and to improve expectations about how fire might behave in the future under changing conditions.

A key motivation behind the project is the need to place the Chimney Tops 2 fire into a broader ecological and historical context. The Chimney Tops 2 fire, which became catastrophic, raised urgent questions about whether such severe fire behavior is an anomaly for these wetter forest types or part of a longer pattern that has simply been under-documented. In wetter, high-biomass systems, the landscape may appear fire-resistant much of the time, but when drought, wind, or fuel conditions align, fires can spread rapidly and cause major impacts. Developing a fire history helps managers interpret those risks with more than just recent observations, which are often too short to represent the true range of variability.

The method highlighted in the opportunity is soil charcoal analysis. Soil charcoal serves as physical evidence of past burning because charcoal fragments can persist in soils for long periods and, when analyzed carefully (often alongside stratigraphy and dating techniques), can provide insights into when fires occurred, how frequently they may have burned, and potentially how fire regimes differed across locations. For landscapes like the eastern Smokies, where tree-ring fire scars and other common fire-history tools may be limited or less reliable due to moisture, forest structure, or decay processes, soil charcoal can be especially useful for capturing older or less obvious fire events. The end goal is a reconstructed timeline and interpretation that can inform future predictions of fire patterns and support park management decisions related to fuels, prescribed fire planning, ecological restoration, and risk reduction.

In terms of administrative details, the opportunity was released on July 19, 2018, with an original application deadline of July 28, 2018, indicating a short turnaround typical of some targeted or time-sensitive cooperative research needs. The award ceiling was $51,000. The listing notes "Expected Awards: 0," which can sometimes appear in federal listings due to internal budgeting, solicitation structure, or how anticipated awards are recorded, but the opportunity itself describes a clear project purpose and funding cap. Eligible applicants included public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, as well as other eligible entities as clarified in the opportunity's additional eligibility information. The CFDA number associated with the opportunity is 15.945, aligning it with National Park Service assistance programs.

Overall, the opportunity funded applied research intended to turn physical evidence in soils into a practical understanding of how fire has shaped, and may continue to shape, the wetter eastern portion of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. By anchoring modern fire management concerns to a longer historical record, the project aimed to improve both scientific understanding and on-the-ground decision-making in a region where rare but high-consequence fire events can have outsized ecological and social impacts.

• The Department of the Interior, National Park Service in the natural resources sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Developing a Fire History for the Eastern Portion of Great Smoky Mountains National Park" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.945.
• This funding opportunity was created on Jul 19, 2018.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jul 28, 2018. (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 $51,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

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