Infrastructure Cluster

The Infrastructure Cluster (AGS-IC) program administered by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) supports critical infrastructure and facilities that advance research in atmospheric and geospace sciences. Operated under the NSF's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences (GEO/AGS), the AGS Infrastructure Cluster includes several subcomponents that offer the scientific community access to advanced tools, data resources, and collaborative platforms. These efforts are primarily aimed at enabling innovative research, improving predictive capabilities, and fostering education and outreach within the geosciences. At the core of the AGS-IC is the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), located in Boulder, Colorado. NCAR functions as a Federally Funded Research and Development Center managed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a nonprofit consortium of North American universities. NCAR provides resources and services that individual universities cannot typically afford, including high-performance computing, sophisticated modeling tools, research aircraft, and extensive atmospheric data sets. NCAR also trains emerging scientists in Earth system science, ensuring the continued development of the field’s talent pipeline. In addition to NCAR, the AGS-IC encompasses the Facilities for Atmospheric Research and Education (FARE) initiative. FARE includes two key program elements: the Lower Atmosphere Observing Facilities (LAOF) and the Community Instruments and Facilities (CIF). LAOF manages large-scale field research assets, such as research aircraft and mobile radar systems, primarily through NCAR and the University of Wyoming. Access to LAOF is by invitation only. Meanwhile, CIF facilitates community access to specialized instruments, with proposal cycles occurring every two to three years. Instrument and facility providers submit proposals for inclusion in CIF’s shared-use inventory. Researchers then request access through a structured NSF-defined process called the Facility and Instrumentation Request Process (FIRP). The AGS-IC also includes the Geospace Facilities (GF), which consist of large geospace observatories and arrays of small instruments. These infrastructures support foundational research into the Earth’s geospace environment and are closely integrated with NSF’s Geospace Cluster. Like LAOF, proposals to GF for large observatory use are invitation-only. Additional solicitations such as the Distributed Array of Small Instruments (DASI) are announced periodically to broaden community participation. Supporting the data and computational needs of atmospheric and geospace science, the IC maintains several high-impact initiatives. These include the NSF Unidata Program Center, which provides near real-time and archived geoscience data to university researchers, and the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center, which offers community access to advanced computational resources. The IC promotes open data sharing, model development, and cross-disciplinary research by funding centers and services that distribute datasets and software tools. Proposals under the AGS Infrastructure Cluster umbrella are accepted year-round, though some components, such as LAOF and GF, operate by invitation only or on distinct solicitation cycles. Submissions must adhere to the requirements of the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) and be submitted via either Research.gov or Grants.gov. There is no formal match requirement, and eligibility is broad, encompassing a variety of research institutions and organizations, including institutions of higher education and nonprofits. Program contacts are provided for each subcomponent to assist applicants. As of the last update, the key contacts include John Hannan for NCAR, Nicholas Anderson for FARE, and Mangala Sharma for Geospace Facilities.