SOLICITATION NOTICE
F -- Water Quality Impacts Decision Support Tool - Water Quality Impacts
- Notice Date
- 3/6/2018
- Notice Type
- Cancellation
- NAICS
- 813312
— Environment, Conservation and Wildlife Organizations
- Contracting Office
- Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency, Acquisition Management Division, Contracts Operations Branch, 1280 Maryland Avenue, SW, Portals Bldg., Room 508A, Washington, District of Columbia, 20250-0567
- ZIP Code
- 20250-0567
- Solicitation Number
- 12315118R0009
- Archive Date
- 3/30/2018
- Point of Contact
- erica robinson, Phone: 2027729085, Billy Rowland, Phone: 202 720 9356
- E-Mail Address
-
erica.robinson@wdc.usda.gov, billy.rowland@wdc.usda.gov
(erica.robinson@wdc.usda.gov, billy.rowland@wdc.usda.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- Water Quality Impacts Decision Support Tool for the The purpose of this purchase order is to allow for participants to voluntarily enroll in Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) on the basis of their potential water quality impact; and to estimate the aggregate water quality impact of CRP enrollments at regional, practices, and program levels. 1. Background USDA FSA CRP is a voluntary program that contracts with landowners to take environmentally sensitive cropland out of production and instead establish some combination of trees and perennial grasses and forbs (known as "conservation covers") that control soil erosion, improve water quality and restore wildlife habitat. In return, program participants receive annual rental payments and cost-share assistance to implement conservation practices. Additional incentives may be provided for the sake of addressing priority resource concerns. Most acres in the program are enrolled through a competitive process known as General Signup. Offers are submitted by landowners and then ranked according to a multi-metric index that reflects anticipated conservation impacts, along with cost. An offer to enroll in CRP consists of a bid, practice, and location. The latter is specified by delineating on a GIS the boundaries of the field desired to be enrolled. This offer polygon becomes the enrollment polygon if the offer is accepted. Given the magnitude of the program-about 24 million acres are currently enrolled across 48 states at a cost of $1.6 billion annually-it is incumbent to enroll only those offers that generate the biggest conservation bang per taxpayer buck. In addition, it is critical to be able to convey the overall conservation impact of the program and that of potential policy changes. The manner in which water quality impacts are considered for both offer selection and program and policy assessments has considerable room for improvement. In the former case, water quality impacts manifest in the ranking index by way of the product of the RKLS RUSLE factors. In the latter case, Environmental Policy Integrated Climate model (EPIC) output for a couple hundred soils is extrapolated to the regional and National levels. Development of decision-support tool(s) (DST) suitable for use by FSA to estimate the difference between typical crop production and grass/forb cover scenarios in • The annual amounts of sediment and nutrients leaving an offer polygon, as well as the net loss of soil from the polygon; and • The aggregate annual amount of sediment and nutrients leaving enrollment polygons, as well as the net loss of soil from the polygons, within a region, of a practice type, or encompassing the program, overall. • Both the fine- and aggregate-scale estimates shall be based on the same underlying model(s). The following considerations shall be taken into account by the DST(s): Sheet and concentrated runoff, sub-surface flows, and upland contributing sources that drain into the field shall be taken into account. The only input data needed from the end user shall be the offer polygon. The end user may have the option to replace defaults values for other input data, such as rotations or managements. Input data not supplied by the end user must be readily available and easily updated. The DST generating field-level estimates shall be developed in such a way as to make its incorporation into other applications-the existing program signup software-straightforward.
- Web Link
-
FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/USDA/FSA/MSD/12315118R0009/listing.html)
- Record
- SN04843732-W 20180308/180306230817-e4fa5756613723efa32d5f246a0b29a5 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)
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