Researchers targeting the NSF Arctic Sciences Division's Arctic Research Opportunities Program Announcement (10-503) must request CPS proposal estimates and letters by December 14th, 2009 to allow sufficient processing time.
The Arctic Research Support and Logistics Program (RSL) pays for the arctic field support (logistics) costs of National Science Foundation/Office of Polar Programs-funded researchers. On occasion, RSL also pays for the arctic logistics costs of NSF proposals funded outside OPP. This funding is provided either directly to the researcher’s grant or via a third-party provider such as CH2M HILL Polar Services, Barrow Arctic Science Consortium, UAF’s Institute of Arctic Biology, U. Wisconsin’s Ice Coring and Drilling Services, or UNAVCO. These third-party providers are engaged directly by NSF via subcontracts, grants, and cooperative agreements. In many cases using one of the third-party providers reduces the overall logistics costs to a proposal due to resource sharing and economies of scale.
When you submit a proposal to the NSF's Arctic Division that includes fieldwork, you are required to include a logistics description in the timeline/work plan section. If you plan to pay for field logistics through your grant you must also include the year-by-year costs in your budget and detail the costs in your budget justification. If you would like the assistance of a third-party provider, do not include these costs as a budget line item. Instead, you should identify your plans clearly and realistically in the logistics description, include statements in your budget justification signaling your intent to request third-party logistics provider support, and if at all possible, obtain a support letter and budget estimate from the provider to include as a supplementary document to your proposal. Researchers who request logistics support/funds beyond the scope of that identified in their funded proposal will be required to justify changes to their Program Officer before any additional support or funding is approved.
To assist researchers in planning their fieldwork and developing an accurate logistics description, CPS offers a proposal checklist. Please consider the support elements listed in the checklist when preparing your logistics plan. If you plan to use CPS as your logistics provider, we can work with you to develop a support letter and budget estimate for inclusion in your proposal. Depending on the complexity of the proposed fieldwork and the volume of requests CPS receives, it may take between three to six weeks to develop an estimate. For that reason we ask that you provide a complete description of your proposed fieldwork (including any appropriate elements identified in the checklist) to Diana Garcia-Lavigne at least three weeks before the proposal deadline.We reserve the right to turn down proposal assistance requests received after the 3-week cutoff.
For more information about proposal assistance, or regarding the services laid out in the checklist, please email Diana Garcia-Lavigne. For an overview and starting point for developing a logistics plan, also visit the Arctic Research Support and Logistics Program site.
Click here for our Proposal Assistance Handout (including checklist) in PDF format.