Mark Schaaf, PhD

Science Program Director, Vice President

Mark has worked on scientific studies, regulatory analyses, and program management since 1984. At Air Sciences his work has involved the mostly dry Owens Lake in California. He has been supporting the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and its Owens Lake Dust Mitigation Project since 1997. He also spearheads Air Sciences’ Owens Lake Science, Technology, and Regulatory contract valued at more than 30 million dollars and in place for over a decade. Wide-scale projects of this scope are nothing new to Mark. Prior to Owens Lake, he was the program manager on a multi-million dollar contract to provide nationwide air quality services to the USDA Forest Service and other federal land management agencies.

A leading air quality expert, Mark was the principal investigator on dozens of air quality impact reports and models. He’s also authored scientific publications on fugitive dust emissions monitoring and modeling, wildland fire behavior and smoke emissions modeling, landscape-scale fire effects tradeoff analysis, and micrometeorology. Earlier in his career his work was more hands on, serving as a firefighter, timber cruiser, and sawmill worker around Oregon.