Grants to Maryland nonprofit organizations, businesses, and institutions of higher education for literature reviews and research related to watershed rehabilitation. Funding is intended to find solutions to obstacles to the implementation of watershed restoration projects. The goal of the program is to increase confidence in proposed restoration project outcomes, clarify the optimal site conditions in which to apply particular restoration techniques, provide useful information to regulatory agencies in project permitting, and offer information that will help guide monitoring programs.

The Restoration Research Award Program funds the answers to key restoration questions focused on the effectiveness of watershed restoration practices. The Pooled Monitoring Initiative pools resources to support scientists who answer key restoration questions posed by the regulatory and practitioner communities through this Restoration Research Request for Proposals (RFP). The ability to pool funding allows for rigorous research to address these large, complicated questions that require robust experimental design carried out by the best research teams.

The research questions are organized into three themes:

• Effectiveness of stormwater and stream restoration programs at the watershed/catchment scale
• Effectiveness of restoration practices at the project scale
• Trade-offs in resource improvements incurred by restoration practices and the resulting net ecological change as measured by a common “currency.

For additional information about these key restoration questions, see: https://cbtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/Pooled-Monitoring-Initiatives-Restoration-Research-RFP_FY23.pdf#page=5

Investigators may request funds to undertake the following activities pertaining to any of these questions:

• Conduct a literature review/synthesis, if the case can be made that enough is already known about a question
• Answer a component of the question with a research project in which specific hypotheses are tested. Research projects may include:
• Experimental or descriptive work in the field;
• Experimental work in the laboratory;
• Modeling studies; and/or
• Use of existing data, if deemed appropriately suited (properly collected with appropriate metadata); or
• Develop a regulatory or practitioner tool related to one or more of the questions that advances the pace or efficacy of the field in question, if the case can be made the tool is needed and you have ample information to support tool development.