Geosciences Research: Atmospheric, Geospace, Earth, and Ocean Sciences (GEO Core) Grant

The U.S. National Science Foundation, through its Directorate for Geosciences, administers the Geosciences Research: Atmospheric, Geospace, Earth, and Ocean Sciences (GEO Core) solicitation. The program supports foundational research that advances the frontiers of knowledge throughout the geosciences. It consolidates opportunities across three programs: Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, Earth Sciences, and Ocean Sciences. NSF emphasizes both systematic advances building on existing scholarship and intellectually ambitious, potentially transformative research that can challenge prevailing paradigms, develop theories or methods, create research tools or datasets, or open new lines of scientific inquiry. Projects do not need to promise a near-term product, deployment, commercial outcome, or later-stage technology development to be competitive. Supported research may address Earth's atmosphere and near-Earth space environment; the structure, physics, and chemical evolution of Earth's interior; water, landscape, and critical zone processes; life and environments through time; and biological, chemical, physical, geological, and geophysical aspects of oceans, ocean basins, and the Great Lakes. Projects may be disciplinary or multidisciplinary and may employ theory, observations, computation, field campaigns, and laboratory studies. They may include the development, deployment, and operation of instrumentation and computing for observations, field work, and laboratory research. Collaborations with industry, national laboratories, international partners, and public-sector organizations are supported, and projects may leverage physical or cyber research infrastructure. NSF particularly encourages proposals from EPSCoR jurisdictions and from a broad range of organizations. The solicitation anticipates approximately $110,000,000 in program funding and an estimated 200 to 350 awards, subject to the availability of funds. Awards may take the form of Standard Grants, Continuing Grants, or Cooperative Agreements. The solicitation does not state an individual award minimum or maximum. NSF seeks projects spanning a wide range of funding levels and durations and encourages investigators to consider appropriate mechanisms available under the PAPPG, including Planning Proposals, RAPID, EAGER, and RAISE for certain preliminary or time-sensitive work. Proposals requesting up to five years of support may be considered where longer awards would facilitate ambitious, transformative research and reduce administrative burden. Voluntary committed cost sharing is prohibited, and the solicitation specifies no applicable indirect cost or other budgetary limitations. Eligible proposers are the categories identified in Chapter I.E of the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide. The solicitation specifically states that unaffiliated individuals are not eligible to submit proposals. There are no restrictions or limits on who may serve as PI, the number of proposals an organization may submit, or the number of proposals a PI or co-PI may submit. Proposals may be submitted through Research.gov or Grants.gov and must be prepared according to the applicable PAPPG and submission-system guidance. Collaborative proposals submitted as separate submissions from multiple organizations must use Research.gov. Proposals involving off-site work require a one-page Off-Site Safety Protocol. Proposals requiring community research platforms must include appropriate facility requests, and proposals involving Academic Research Fleet vessels must include the required UNOLS Science and Marine Equipment request form. Applicable permitting arrangements must be addressed in the Project Description. NSF GEO also imposes data management and sharing requirements. Final datasets, metadata files, derived data products, relevant software or code, and physical samples must be deposited in a long-lived, publicly accessible archive upon publication of results or within two years of collection, whichever occurs first. The Data Management and Sharing Plan must explain how this requirement will be met or justify any limits where full compliance is impracticable or inadvisable. Proposals are evaluated under the National Science Board-approved Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts criteria and may undergo ad hoc review, panel review, or both. Following an initial compliance check and review by an NSF Program Officer, three or more external experts will review proposals in most cases. All else being equal after merit review, NSF may give preference to institutions with lower indirect cost rates. Full proposals are accepted at any time, so there is no fixed application opening or closing date and no required letter of intent or preliminary proposal. Awards are subject to standard NSF award conditions, and additional reporting requirements apply. Unless an award notice provides otherwise, principal investigators must submit annual project reports and a project outcomes report for the general public, including applicable data and sample management activities. Program questions may be directed to the relevant NSF GEO program inbox, including atmos@nsf.gov for Atmospheric Sciences, geospace@nsf.gov for Geospace Sciences, LET@nsf.gov for Life and Environments through Time, SPSE@nsf.gov for Structure and Physics of the Solid Earth, WaLCZ@nsf.gov for Water, Landscape, and Critical Zone processes, CESEV@nsf.gov for Chemical Evolution of Solid Earth and Volcanology, BioOCE@nsf.gov for Biological Oceanography, MGG@nsf.gov for Marine Geology and Geophysics, CO@nsf.gov for Chemical Oceanography, PhysO@nsf.gov for Physical Oceanography, S3P@nsf.gov for U.S. Sub-Seafloor Sampling, and OTIC@nsf.gov for Ocean Technology and Interdisciplinary Coordination. Research.gov technical assistance is available at rgov@nsf.gov or 1-800-381-1532, and Grants.gov assistance is available at support@grants.gov or 1-800-518-4726.

Address both Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts; clearly demonstrate advancement of foundational geoscience knowledge; NSF particularly values intellectually ambitious and potentially transformative research; interdisciplinary connections are strongly encouraged; scientifically justify use of AI, advanced computation, or automation rather than using these tools incidentally; select the GEO program best aligned with the project's primary focus; address data, metadata, software/code, and physical-sample archiving requirements.