Redhorse team members developed a Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) Increment Tracking System for the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection (NDEP) for 16 hydrographic areas (HA) in Nevada, including HA83 – the Truckee Canyon corridor. The project included comprehensive AERMOD modeling analyses that estimated PSD increment consumption in each HA studied. The goal of the assessment was to provide NDEP with a modeling analysis that characterizes certain criteria pollutant emissions in each study area, and develop a system to track future air pollution changes in the study area.

The AERMOD analysis consisted of developing emissions inventories for all facilities in each HA, developing model receptor grids, processing meteorological data, and running a series of models to determine PSD increment values at each receptor. The Redhorse team developed extensive emission inventories for several pollutants in each study area that included all stationary sources, mobile sources, and area sources. Receptor grids were developed for each of the 16 HAs. AERMAP, the terrain pre-processor associated with AERMOD, was used to extract receptor elevations from U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Digital Elevation Model (DEM) files for use as input to AERMOD. Multi-level meteorological input data were processed with the AERMET pre-processor for use in the analyses. AERMET consists of a multi-stage process for extracting meteorological data.