Yellowstone National Park will receive $1 million for research that could find new life in and around the hydrothermal vents of Yellowstone Lake.

The money will come from $500,000 in federal funds and a match from the Yellowstone Park Foundation with help from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

The federal grant is part of the National Park Service Centennial Challenge, unveiled by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne in August 2006. The Centennial Challenge is designed to provide millions of dollars in public money to be matched by private donations in each of the 10 years leading up to the National Park Service Centennial in 2016.

Yellowstone is one of nine National Park Service sites that will receive a total of nearly $27 million to fund projects and programs under the Centennial Challenge in 2009.

The shoreline and bottom of Yellowstone Lake contain hydrothermal vents, which are considered rich habitat for microbes. Scientists believe they may have identified just 1 percent of all the tiny life forms that live in the lake. They expect to discover new species by looking under a microscope at the cells of the organisms contained in the water samples. They’ll also work to analyze genetic information on the newly discovered microbes using DNA tests that originated with a bacterium first discovered in Yellowstone in the 1960s.

The results of the research will increase knowledge of biological diversity and complexity of Yellowstone, and may offer clues leading to better understanding of global environmental issues such as water pollution, deforestation and climate change.

The research will be conducted by a public-private partnership between Yellowstone National Park, the U.S. Geological Survey, Eastern Oceanics LLC, Montana State University’s Thermal Biology and Big Sky Institutes, and the J. Craig Venter Institute.

Information on the Centennial Challenge initiative, including details on the other 2009 projects and the 2008 progress report, is available online at www.nps.gov/2016.