Owens Lake Scientific Advisory Panel: Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Alternative Dust Control Methods

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During the 20th century, the city of Los Angeles diverted surface water flowing into Owens Lake for water supply, transforming the large, closed-basin, saline lake into a small brine pool surrounded by dry playa. Under high winds, the exposed lakebed produced large amounts of airborne dust, resulting in the highest concentrations of airborne particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of 10 micrometers or less (PM10) in the United States. Since 2000, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, at the direction of the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District, has been constructing and implementing dust control measures on the dry lakebed, with the objective of meeting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency National Ambient Air Quality Standards for PM10 and the PM10 standards set by the state of California.

Many of the dust control measures used at Owens Lake require large amounts of water, energy, and maintenance to sustain their performance. Effectiveness and Impacts of Dust Control Measures for Owens Lake evaluates the effectiveness of alternative solutions for their degree of PM10 reduction and the extent that they reduce use of water in controlling dust emissions. This report considers the associated energy and environmental and economic impacts of these proposed measures and assesses their durability and reliability.

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184 pages · 7 x 10 · paperback
ISBN Paperback: 0-309-67079-9
ISBN Ebook: 0-309-67080-2
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17226/25658

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National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Effectiveness and Impacts of Dust Control Measures for Owens Lake. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

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David T. Allen

David T. Allen (NAE) is the Gertz Regents Professor of Chemical Engineering, and the Director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Resources, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of seven books and over 250 papers, primarily in the areas of urban air quality, the engineering of sustainable systems, and the development of materials for environmental and engineering education. Dr. Allen has been a lead investigator for multiple air quality measurement studies, which have had a substantial impact on the direction of air quality policies. He directs the Air Quality Research Program for the State of Texas, and he is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the American Chemical Society’s journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. The quality of his work has been recognized by the National Science Foundation, the AT&T Foundation, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors, and the State of Texas. He has served on a variety of governmental advisory panels and from 2012 to 2015 chaired the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board. Dr. Allen received his B.S. degree in chemical engineering, with distinction, from Cornell University. His M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemical engineering were awarded by the California Institute of Technology. He has held visiting faculty appointments at the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Department of Energy.

Newsha Ajami

Newsha K. Ajami is the director of Urban Water Policy with Stanford University’s Water in the West program. Her work is focused on sustainable water resource management, water policy, innovation, and financing, and the water-energy-food nexus. Her research has been interdisciplinary and impact driven, focusing on the improvement of the science-policy-stakeholder interface by incorporating social and economic measures and effective communication. Dr. Ajami is a two-term gubernatorial appointee to the Bay Area Regional Water Quality Control Board. Before joining Stanford, she worked as a senior scholar at the Pacific Institute and served as a Science and Technology fellow at the California State Senate’s Natural Resources and Water Committee, where she worked on various water and energy related legislation. She has published many highly cited peer-reviewed articles, coauthored two books, and contributed opinion pieces to the New York Times, San Jose Mercury and the Sacramento Bee. She was the recipient of the 2005 National Science Foundation award for AMS Science and Policy Colloquium and ICSC-World Laboratory Hydrologic Science and Water Resources Fellowship from 2000 to 2003. She serves as member of the National Academies Water Science and Technology Board. Dr. Ajami received a B.S. degree in civil and environmental engineering from Tehran Polytechnic, M.S. degree in hydrology and water resources from the University of Arizona, and Ph.D. degree in civil and environmental engineering from the University of California, Irvine.

Roya Bahreini

Roya Bahreini is an associate professor of atmospheric science at the University of California, Riverside. She specializes in ground-based and laboratory measurements of particulate matter composition and microphysical properties; air quality; and aerosol direct- and indirect-effects on climate. Dr. Bahreini conducts particle monitoring and source characterization at the Salton Sea. She received the National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2015, the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers award in 2014, as well as The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds award in 2014. Dr. Bahreini received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in environmental science and engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

Pratim Biswas

Pratim Biswas (NAE) is professor and chair of the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. He also serves as an Assistant Vice Chancellor of International Programs. Dr. Biswas’ research areas include aerosol science and engineering with applications in energy and environmental nanotechnology, nanoparticle synthesis, advanced material synthesis, solar energy utilization, electronics, air pollution control, sensors, atmospheric issues, and thermal sciences. Dr. Biswas has played a leading role at the National and International arena in the field of Aerosol Science and Technology by serving on several National Committees. He was appointed to the National Academy of Engineering in recognition of his advancement in the science of aerosol dynamics and particle removal technologies. He has more than 350 refereed journal publications, has presented several invited presentations nationally and internationally, holds eight patents and has spun off two start-up companies based on his inventions. Dr. Biswas received a bachelor’s degree in technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, M.S. degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

Valerie Eviner

Valerie Eviner is an associate professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California at Davis (her status will change to professor on July 1, 2019). In addition, she is an associate ecologist in the UC Davis Agricultural Experiment Station. Her research interests are in using a mechanistic understanding of plant-soil, plant-plant, plant-microbe, and plant-animal interactions to increase the understanding and effective management of ecosystem services, plant invasions, restoration, plant community composition, biogeochemical cycling, global change, grazing systems, and resilience of ecosystem structure and function. Her current projects include exploring the impacts of resource manipulations on plant competitive interactions. Dr. Eviner is a fellow of the Ecological Society of America and an associate editor of Restoration Ecology. She received a B.A. in biology from Rutgers University and a Ph.D. in integrative biology from the University of California at Berkeley.

Gregory S. Okin

Gregory S. Okin is a professor in the department of geography and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. His research focuses on the geomorphology, soils, and vegetation of arid and semiarid lands at scales ranging from meters to region, including aeolian geomorphology and the interaction between soils, vegetation, and climate in deserts. He conducts field and laboratory research and employs remote sensing and spatial modeling to understand fine-scale processes, meso-scale patterns, and global-scale Earth system interactions. Dr. Okin is a member of the editorial board of Ecosphere and an editor of Reviews of Physics. He received a B.A. degree in chemistry and philosophy from Middlebury College and an M.S. degree in geology and Ph.D. degree in geochemistry, both from the California Institute of Technology.

Armistead G. Russell

Armistead G. Russell is the Howard T. Tellepsen Chair and Regents’ Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, where his research is aimed at better understanding the dynamics of air pollutants at urban and regional scales and assessing their impacts on health and the environment to develop approaches to design strategies to effectively improve air quality. Dr. Russell was a member of EPA’s Clean Air Science Advisory Committee (CASAC) and a member of the National Research Council’s Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, and he has served on multiple National Academies committees. He chaired the CASAC NOx-SOx, Secondary NAAQS review panel, the Ambient Air Monitoring Methods Subcommittee, and the Council on Clean Air Compliance Analysis’ Air Quality Modeling Subcommittee, and was on the Health Effects Institute’s Report Review Committee. He was an Associate Editor of the journal Environmental Science and Technology. He co-directed the Southeastern Center for Air Pollution and Epidemiology and co-directs the NSF Sustainability Research Network “Environmentally Sustainable, Healthy and Livable Cities” project. He earned a B.S. degree from Washington State University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the California Institute of Technology, all in mechanical engineering.

Scott W. Tyler

Scott Tyler is a hydrologist specializing in hydrology and environmental fluid dynamics at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is a professor with the Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Dr. Tyler's areas of focus span the wide range of hydrology and environmental fluid dynamics. His research is focused on water, solutes and energy fluxes in the subsurface, as well as their exchange into the atmosphere, with a focus on arid environments. He serves as the Director of the Centers for Transformative Environmental Sensing Programs, a National Science Foundation supported instrument center, focusing on the development of distributed fiber optic sensing and wireless sensing of environmental variables. Dr. Tyler is the current President of the Hydrology Section of the American Geophysical Union, and he is a fellow of the AGU, the Geological Society of America, and the Soil Science Society of America. He received a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Connecticut, M.S. degree in hydrology from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, and Ph.D. in hydrology/hydrogeology from the University of Nevada, Reno.

Robert S. Van Pelt

Robert Scott Van Pelt is a soil scientist in Wind Erosion and Water Conservation Research for the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. His research interests are mainly in soil-atmosphere interactions, including aeolian processes in landscapes, ranging from tilled production fields to native plant communities. In addition to direct measurements of horizontal and vertical sediment transport using passive and optically based sensors, Dr. Van Pelt uses chemical tracers to follow the movement of particles from their source to their vector of transport or place of deposition. He is actively involved in the current USDA-ARS effort to investigate and develop models of rangeland wind erosion. In addition, he is working on a research project to optimize water use efficiency for environmentally sustainable agricultural production systems in semi-arid regions. Dr. Van Pelt received a B.S. in biology and an M.S. in floristics, plant ecology, and climatology from the University of New Mexico; he received a Ph.D. degree in soil and atmospheric physics from New Mexico State University.

Akula Venkatram

Akula Venkatram is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California at Riverside. His research is focused on the development and application of models for the transport and dispersion of air pollutants over urban and regional scales. He was the founding chair of the department of mechanical engineering. Previously, he held positions as the Vice President of Air Sciences at ENSR Consulting and Engineering and the Head of Model Development at the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. Dr. Venkatram has led the development of the first comprehensive long-range acid deposition model – The Acid Deposition and Oxidant Model (ADOM) – which was used in US-Canada negotiations on sulfur and nitrogen emission control. Dr. Venkatram co-edited and contributed to the “Lectures on Air Pollution Modeling” published by the American Meteorological Society (AMS). He was a member of the team that developed the AERMOD atmospheric dispersion modeling system, and was a principal contributor to RLINE, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) model for line-type source emissions. He is the recipient of the inaugural award from the AMS Committee on Meteorological Aspects of Air Pollution for “contributions to the field of air pollution meteorology through the development of simple models in acid deposition, ozone photochemistry and urban dispersion”. His research on modeling the air quality impact of transport-related emissions was recognized in 2010 by the US EPA, through a Scientific and Technological Achievement Award for “expanding and improving the scientific and regulatory communities’ ability to assess the impacts of mobile source emissions”. His research on this topic is summarized in the monograph “Urban Transportation and Air Pollution”. Dr. Venkatram received a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University.

Raymond A. Wassel

Raymond Wassel holds the position of scholar on the staff of the National Academies' Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology. He develops and manages committee consensus studies and other activities that help resolve complex environmental science and engineering issues. Mr. Wassel has substantially contributed to numerous reports on issues related to environmental contaminant assessment and mitigation, exposure science, safety engineering, sustainability, waste management, health and ecological risk management, and research priority setting. Many of those reports provided the scientific and technical bases for government decisions of great relevance to multiple stakeholders. Mr. Wassel received MS degrees in chemical engineering and environmental sciences from the University of Virginia and a BA degree in biology from Canisius College.

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Owens Lake Scientific Advisory Panel: Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Alternative Dust Control Methods

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Owens Lake Scientific Advisory Panel: Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Alternative Dust Control Methods

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Featured publication

Effectiveness and Impacts of Dust Control Measures for Owens Lake

Description

Collaborators

Committee

Sponsors

Staff

Major units and sub-units

Contact

Provide feedback

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More like this

Review of the draft United by Nature assessment

Modernizing Mathematics Education for Grades 9-14

Health Care Financing to Improve Availability of Affordable Contraception: Identifying Promising Practices

Review of the draft United by Nature assessment

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Transportation Research Board Executive Office

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Earth Systems and Resources Program Area

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