The Water Resources Department is offering a grant to develop and validate next-generation evaporation pans.

This grant is for the purpose of developing and validating a new, more accurate method for measuring open-water evaporation, crucial given increasing water demand and decreasing supply. The project aims to finalize the design, deploy, and test a novel Floating Evaporation Pan (FEP) to enhance the precision of evaporation measurements on reservoirs and lakes. Research objectives include finalizing the FEP’s semi-submerged design with adjustable freeboard and wave guard for testing at Cochiti Lake. The FEP’s accuracy will be assessed against a hemispherical evaporation chamber over one year, with results compared to established methods like the Class A evaporation pan and energy-budget equations. This will establish the FEP’s reliability, accuracy, and superiority over existing technologies.

Opportunity ID: 294925

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General Information

Document Type:	Grants Notice
Funding Opportunity Number:	BOR-UC-17-N010
Funding Opportunity Title:	The Next Generation of Evaporation Pans
Opportunity Category:	Other
Opportunity Category Explanation:	Single Source
Funding Instrument Type:	Cooperative Agreement
Category of Funding Activity:	Natural Resources
Category Explanation:	–
Expected Number of Awards:	1
Assistance Listings:	15.560 — SECURE Water Act – Research Agreements
Cost Sharing or Matching Requirement:	Yes
Version:	Synopsis 1
Posted Date:	Jun 22, 2017
Last Updated Date:	–
Original Closing Date for Applications:	Jul 07, 2017
Current Closing Date for Applications:	Jul 07, 2017
Archive Date:	Aug 06, 2017
Estimated Total Program Funding:	$312,637
Award Ceiling:	$312,637
Award Floor:	$312,637

Eligibility

Eligible Applicants:	Others (see text field entitled “Additional Information on Eligibility” for clarification)
Additional Information on Eligibility:	University of New Mexico

Additional Information

Agency Name:	Bureau of Reclamation
Description:	A new, more accurate and precise way to measure open-water evaporation is needed, especially as the demand for water increases as the supply decreases (Phillips and others, 2013), impacting water amounts ranchers, farmers, cities, and environmental restoration efforts receive. The goal of this project is to finalize the design, test, and validate a new open-water evaporation method. This proposed research strives to produce a more accurate method for measuring evaporation on reservoirs and lakes with the accuracy of this new method being validated with a hemispherical evaporation chamber. More specifically, the goal of this research is to finalize the design of and deploy and test a floating evaporation pan, and then compare the evaporation results to more common and established methods like the Class A evaporation pan, energy-budget equations, and bulk-aerodynamic equations. This will be accomplished by completing the following three research objectives. • Finalize the design of a semi-submerged Floating Evaporation Pan (FEP) that will have an adjustable freeboard and a protective wave guard, and then test the design at Cochiti Lake. • Assess the accuracy of the FEP with a hemispherical evaporation chamber while deployed Cochiti Lake for one year and calculate evaporation with various equations using micrometeorological instrumentations attached to the FEP. • Compute and compare the volume of water evaporated on a monthly time step for the FEP, a nearby Class A evaporation pan, and common energy-budget-, temperature-, and aerodynamic-based equations over a year-long period. The completion of these objectives will determine the reliability, accuracy, precision, and improvement over current methods for the proposed technology.
Link to Additional Information:	–
Grantor Contact Information:	If you have difficulty accessing the full announcement electronically, please contact: Karen Shubert Grants Management Specialist Phone 801 524 3663 Email:kshubert@usbr.gov

Version History

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Packages

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