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Spotlight

Scott Speckart

Scott Speckart

Hometown: Salt Lake City

Program: PhD (Graduated December 2013)

Current Position: Air Dispersion Modeler, Nevada Division of Environmental Protection

Research Interests: My interests include: the examination of atmospheric dispersion both numerically and experimentally. The numerical aspect spans from Lagrangian dispersion models to simpler Atmospheric dispersion models (ADE). Comparing these model results with measurements from the field is very rewarding. My research has implemented these models and methodology to understanding the problem of near source deposition of PM10 generated from traffic on unpaved roads.

I am also interested in the modeling of turbulence. This includes the implementation of simple mixing length models to more complex Large Eddy Simulation (LES). The application of these methods Atmospheric flows to smaller scale engineering flows is of great interest to me.

Publications:
Speckart, S., Pardyjak, E., Quick response modeling of windbreaks (Manuscript under preparation).
Speckart, S., Pardyjak, E., Veranth J.V., Parameters that influence the removal of PM10 in the near source zone downwind of unpaved roads: suggested by field studies and confirmed by numerical solution (Manuscript under preparation).
Holmes, H.A., Pardyjak, E.R., Speckart S.O., Alexander A., 2011. Comparison of indoor/outdoor carbon content and time resolved PM concentrations for gas and biomass cooking fuels in Nogales Sonora. Atmospheric Environment 45:7600-7611
Pardyjak, E.R., Speckart, S. O., Yin F., Veranth J.M., 2008. Near source deposition of vehicle generated fugitive dust on vegetation and buildings: Model development and theory. Atmospheric Environment 42: 6442–6452
J. Veranth, S. Speckart, B. Addepelli, and E. Pardyjak, 2010: Development of windbreak dust control models for roadway fugitive dust mitigation and transport flux, AAAR 29th Annual Conference, Portland, OR, 25-29 October 2010. Paper Number: 8.B.16
John M. Veranth, Kevin Perry, Eric Pardyjak, Scott Speckart, Raed Labban, Erin Kaser, John Watson, Judy C. Chow, Vic Etyemezian, Steve Kohl, “Characterization of PM2.5 Dust Emissions from Training/Testing Range Operations." Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) Project SI-1190 August 2008)
John Veranth, Scott Speckart, Eric Pardyjak, “Experimental and modeling study of particle deposition near roads.” (American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR) Reno Nevada, September 2007)
H.A. Holmes, S. O. Speckart and E. R. Pardyjak, 2007: Comparison of the time evolved spatial distribution of urban PM2.5 concentrations during burning and wind-blown high PM events in Yuma, AZ, Amer. Meteor. Soc., Seventh Symposium on the Urban Environment, San Diego, CA, 10-13 September 2007, paper 8.5.
Eric Pardyjak, Prathap Ramamurthy, Scott Speckart, “Development of a windbreak dust control strategy tool for communities in arid climates such as the US-Mexico border region.” (Southwest Consortium for Environmental Research and Policy (SCERP) Annual Technical Conference, Tucson Arizona, December 2006)
Eric Pardyjak, Scott Speckart, “Assessment of windbreaks as a dust control strategy for communities in arid climates such as the US-Mexico border region.” (Southwest Consortium for Environmental Research and Policy (SCERP) Annual Technical Conference, San Diego January 2006)
Veranth , J., S. Speckart, E. Pardyjak, V. Etyemezian, Experimental and numerical studies of near source fugitive dust transport, American Association for Aerosol Research, 2005 Annual Conference, Austin, Texas October 17 - 21, 2005.
Scott Speckart, Eric Pardyjak, Vic Etyemezian, Fang Yin, John Veranth,” Computational Modeling of Near-Source Deposition of Fugitive Dust on Vegetative Surfaces.” (Air and Waste Management Association Conference, Minneapolis Minnesota, June 2005)

Past Research Projects

Atmspheric Field Measurement Projects

 An insturmented street canyon at during MUST

Mountain Terrain Field Campaigns

The MATERHORN Project:

 Sage Brush extended flux tower This ONR (Office of Naval Research) funded MURI (Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative) project was led by the University of Notre Dame built on our research group’s work related to flow in complex terrain and during transition periods. It was designed to better understand flow and turbulence processes in mountainous terrain for improved mesoscale modeling. The project improved understanding of turbulent transport processes in the surface layer on different types of terrain subject to different levels of synoptic forcing. As part of the project, a series of large field campaigns were conducted at the Dugway Proving Grounds. In winter 2014, the MATERHORN Fog-X field campaign was conducted in the Salt Lake Valley and in the Heber Valley in northern Utah.

Here are a list of important links of interest for the project:

MATERHORN Fog-X website
Fall Campaign Notes (September 24 through October 25, 2012)
Spring Campaign Notes (April 22 through May 19, 2013)
Spring Campaign Notes (April 22 through May 19, 2013)
MATERHORN Press Release

Urban Field Campaigns

SCERP (Southwestern Consortium for Environmental Research and Policy) reduction of road dust through the use of windbreaks.

  • Spatial variability of pollutants in Yuma, AZ (PhD Students H.A. Holmes, S.O. Speckart)
  • Indoor and Outdoor Pollution measurements in Nogales, MX (PhD Students H.A. Holmes, S.O. Speckart)

Joint Urban 2003: The largest Full Scale Urban field experiment ever; conducted in Oklahoma City During the Summer of 2003.

Urban Trace-gas Emissions Study (UTES) is a multidiscplinary biodiversity project funded by the National Science Foundation to investigate urban emissions of carbon dioxide and water vapor.

MUST (Mock Urban Setting Test): Large scale field experiment sponsored by the DOD and DOE. This field campagaign was run in September 2001 at the Dugway Proving grounds in western Utah. The focus of this experiments was to better characterize tranport and dispersion of plumes around buildings at very large Reynolds numbers. The experiments have provided new data sets for modelers as well as insight to the physical trasport mechanisms at work within and around the Urban Canopy.

VTMX (Vertical Transport and Mixing Experiment) October 2000 in Salt Lake City, UT. DOE sponsored project investigating vertical tranport and mixing throughout the Salt Lake Valley.

URBAN 2000 - DOE sponsored Urban field campaign (October 2000) located in Salt Lake City, UT. The experiment coincided with the VTMX experiment.

PAFEX PAFEX (Phoenix Air Flow Experiments): Two part field campaign that took place in Phoenix, Arizona. PAFEX-I (January 14-February 1, 1998). PAFEX-II (July 1-Aug 15, 1998).

Other Field Campaigns

Development of a Windbreak Dust Predictive Model and Mitigation Planning Tool:

 This SERDP (Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program) funded project has a focus of developing improved transport and deposition models. We have conducted deposition experiments in the wind-tunnel investigating the effects of turbulence on enhanced deposition to vegetative elements. The results are being used to develop generalized deposition parameterizations for use in Lagrangian transport models. The project also includes validation field experiments.

The BLLAST Experiment:

 The Boundary Layer Late Afternoon and Sunset Turbulence (BLLAST) Experiment was conducted in Lannemezan, France to investigate various atmospheric boundary layer phenomena associated with transition from the fully convective boundary layer to the nocturnal boundary layer. The EFD Team participated in the project by deploying instruments for turbulent flux measurements as well as tethered balloon meteorological measurement.

Urban Simulation Research Projects

The GEnUSiS (Green Environmental Urban Simulations for Sustainability) Project:

 Surface Temperature simulations from QUIC ENERGY

This collaborative multidisciplinary NSF funded project ran from 2011-2015 and built on previous NSF projects. The project, titled “Understanding the impact of Green Infrastructure on urban microclimate and energy use aims to develop tools to better understand urban transport physics using state of the art simulation technologies including massively parallel urban Large-Eddy Simulations, radiation and mass transport using parallel computation techniques on the GPU, as well as state of the art optimization techniques. The project is also attempting to link small-scale building resolving models with mesoscale weather models for improved prediction capability. More generally, this project addresses the critical need to improve our understanding of how Green Infrastructure (and more generally land-use and land cover change) interacts with the urban environment at the local street level scale, neighborhood scale, city scale, and mesoscales to determine the distribution of heat, moisture and pollutants.

The project also has a substanial outreach component designed to expose High School and new college students to concepts relate to atmospheric transport, Green Infrastructure, and computational modeling. For more information on our NSF Outreach project can be found here.

LOCALIZED DISTRIBUTED POWER GENERATION: ECONOMICALLY ROBUST, DEMAND-OPTIMIZED PLACEMENT OF URBAN ENERGY PRODUCTION SYSTEMS::

Distributed Energy Generation Flow Chart

Educational Outreach Projects