Preservation Technology and Training Grants

2025 Application Closed

Application instructions and information found here.

Deadline: March 4, 2025.

The Preservation Technology and Training (PTT) Grants are cooperative agreements administered by the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT), the National Park Service’s innovation center for the preservation community.

The 2025 PTT cooperative agreements are intended for cultural resource projects which will create better tools, better materials, and better approaches to conserving buildings, landscapes, and cultural resources. The goal of the PTT Grants is to fund projects that advance the field of preservation. Applications should be innovative in nature and on the cutting edge of preservation practice. The project scope should showcase a new model of preservation practice and be able to be disseminated to the broadest audience and impact national, regional, and/or local preservation organizations.

This funding opportunity is limited to cooperative agreements with Federal, State, local, and tribal governments, Native Hawaiian organizations, educational institutions, and other public entities in accordance with 54 U.S.C. § 305305(b).

Grant Project Progress Updates

Showing results 1-10 of 26

  • National Center for Preservation Technology and Training

    Final Report on The Friction Cone Penetrometer

    • Offices: National Center for Preservation Technology and Training

    This report describes the results of the Friction Cone Penetrometer (FCP) project partially funded by the National Park Service’s (NPS) National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT) with funds provided in 2013 and the NPS’s Southeastern Archeological Center (SEAC) with funds provided from 2013 to 2016. Using the NCPTT funds, SEAC entered into a Cooperative Ecosystems Study Unit (CESU) agreement with the Department of Mechanical Engineering,

    • Offices: National Center for Preservation Technology and Training
    Map of Death Valley National Park

    Applying geomorphic principles to help understand human prehistory in the context of desert landscape evolution has been an integral part of archaeological investigations for many decades(Waters, 1992).

    • Locations: Capitol Reef National Park
    • Offices: National Center for Preservation Technology and Training
    Sleeping Rainbow Ranch Virtual Tour Expansion Team

    Documenting historic sites is necessary to the mission of the National Parks Service. However, their mission is to also preserve and protect those areas. These SPARK beacons are an unobtrusive way to bring history, interpretation, and images to a site—directly into the hands of the visitors.

  • National Center for Preservation Technology and Training

    Materials Characterization Utilizing Advanced Spectral Imaging

    • Offices: National Center for Preservation Technology and Training

    The use of noninvasive advanced imaging techniques addresses a critical need to support preservation at all levels – national, state and local. The grant supported the advancement of non-destructive analyses through the integration of aligned spectral techniques to develop a multi-functional system with enhanced capabilities for heritage science.

  • National Center for Preservation Technology and Training

    Climate Change and Cultural Landscapes: Research Planning and Stewardship (2015-02)

    • Offices: National Center for Preservation Technology and Training
    The remnant dyke structures at Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve

    With a grant from NCPTT, the University of Oregon created a draft manual for management response to the impacts of climate change on cultural landscapes. This is a work in progress and the manual is projected to be available in the fall of 2016.

    • Offices: National Center for Preservation Technology and Training
    Three photos of teams of scientists working

    This report details the results of the 2017 Get the Lead Out! Workshop that was conducted by the LAMAR Institute and National Park Service in June, 2017. It also incorporates data from an earlier 2015 workshop, as well as elemental data collected by researchers since 2012. Small arms ammunition in America, throughout the eighteenth-and early nineteenth-centuries, consisted of round soft-metal balls.

    • Offices: National Center for Preservation Technology and Training
    Photo of Gentlemen examining historic machine gun

    Most archeologists and curators can only identify a bullet or cartridge case to caliber. This project is an innovative use of microscopically accurate forensic casting technology and testing of digital imaging technology that resulted in a database of rifling characteristics for 788 firearms that can be used to identify some common pre-1900 rifled firearm ammunition components to type, model, or gunmaker.

    • Offices: National Center for Preservation Technology and Training
    Aerial View of New York

    The National Parks Service awarded faculty in Cornell University’s Department of City and Regional with a grant to explore the potential for 4D geographic information systems (GIS) modeling to support historic preservation professionals in the context of an important cultural landscape and municipal park. (The term 4D refers to 3D modeling plus the incorporation of the ability to visualize and analyze change over time.)

    • Offices: National Center for Preservation Technology and Training

    The grant from NPS NCPTT funded a study regarding the energy efficiency and cost-effectiveness of radiant barrier retrofits of historic homes in hot- humid climates.

  • National Center for Preservation Technology and Training

    MODERNIZING PLANT RECORDS MANAGEMENT

    • Offices: National Center for Preservation Technology and Training
    Three workers maintaining garden

    This report introduces readers to digital plant records management, provides a comparative analysis of the leading digital plant recordkeeping tools, and outlines considerations related to use of these tools to enhance plant care, public education, and research. This report is intended for a National Park Service (NPS) audience, but may also be useful to other land managing organizations that are assessing plant records management options.

Tags: ncptt grants

j

Grant Recipients (1995-present)

Map of PTT Grants (1994-present)

A map of the continental United States with points showing grant recipients and awards.

Last updated: March 5, 2025

Experience More