Habitat Harbor Seals Study

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This financial assistance opportunity is being issued under a Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Unit (CESU) program. CESUs are partnerships that provide research technical assistance and education. This announcement is notification of intent to award CESU agreement to the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Project Title: Habitat Harbor Seals. The project intended award estimate is $298,517, projected project period is 8/1/12 to 12/31/14. This new project would initiate a study of the availability of glacial ice as habitat for harbor seals as a resting substrate in Johns Hopkins Inlet in Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, using digital imagery, remote-sensing technology, and geospatial modeling techniques. Specifically, remote-sensing tools and technology would be developed, with a CESU partner at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Geophysical Institute, to identify and quantify glacial ice availability in relation to harbor seal distribution and abundance. Though this scope of work is new, it is closely related to and cooperatively conducted with on-going harbor seal population monitoring conducting by the NPS in Glacier Bay National Park. This primary objectives of this collaborative project between the National Park Service, Glacier Bay National Park and University of Alaska Fairbanks, Geophysical Institute are to assess the availability of tidewater glacial ice as factor that may influence the distribution and abundance of harbor seals in Glacier Bay National Park by (1) examining the relationship between the availability of glacial ice and harbor seal spatial distribution and abundance using remote-sensing techniques and advance geostatistical models and (2) quantifying the seasonal and annual trends in glacial ice availability. The National Park Service Will: o Provide access to airborne imagery data of seals and glacial ice from Johns Hopkins Inlet from 2007-2013 for the purposes of developing remote-sensing methodologies for quantify ice availability and density and seals density. o Fully cooperate and collaborate in a positive and timely manner on requests for data, input, and collaboration on manuscript and reports. o Inform the UM PI and student of the specific activities required to comply with the “NPS Interim Guidance Document Governing Code of Conduct, Peer Review, and Information Quality Correction for National Park Service Cultural and Natural Resource Disciplines,” and any and all subsequent guidance issued by the NPS Director to replace this interim document. o To actively engage with UAF staff to ensure that the process, content, timeline, and objectives of the project products meet the needs of the NPS. o Collaborate with UAF as co-author on any published or formally presented material developed or derived from this Task Agreement. o Collaborate with UAF, as appropriate, in a sixty-day wrap-up period following the due date of the last project product. NPS did not solicit full and open competition for this award based the following criteria: This is a task order under an existing cooperative agreement H9911080028. (1) Unique Qualifications – The applicant is uniquely qualified to perform the activity based upon a variety of demonstrable factors such as location, property ownership, voluntary support capacity, cost-sharing ability if applicable, technical expertise, or other such unique qualifications.

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