Geospatial Projects
Analysis, Cartography, Urban Planning, Geodesign, Data Management, Programming, Geography
Monitoring the Animas River Watershed
Using Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis Techniques to Monitor Environmental Variables of the Animas River Watershed Pre- and Post-Flooding
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New Mexico State University - Intro to Remote Sensing (GEOG573) - Term Project - Fall 2025
Objectives:
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Map floodwater extent before vs after the October flooding event using Landsat 8/9 data.
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Quantify changes in surface/soil moisture using a NIR-SWIR moisture index.
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Analyze and interpret remotely-sensed data according to established composites and spectral indices.
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Summarize impacts to lithology and development within the high-risk flood areas identified in a previous study.
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Summary:
The analysis focuses on the Animas River watershed in northwest New Mexico and southwest Colorado, an area characterized by steep terrain, variable lithology, and expanding human development in flood-prone valley bottoms. In early October 2024, the region experienced a significant inland flooding event following sustained rainfall. This project continues the work from a previous study published in October 2025 as part of the GEOG578 Term Project and further, evaluates the spatial distribution of floodwater and near-surface moisture change using Sentinel-2 MSI imagery acquired before and after the event and various remote sensing applications acquired in GEOG 573. These steps include data acquisition, preprocessing the Sentinel-2 data to appropriately represent the area of interest during pre- and post- flooding, deriving spectral indices and calculating differences, and visualizing spectral profiles of specific flood-prone areas of the greater watershed.
From Mountain Peaks to High-Desert Basin
Modeling Hydrologic Features and Assessing Flood Risk Along The Animas River in Southwestern Colorado and Northwestern New Mexico with GIS
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New Mexico State University - Fundamentals of GIS (GEOG578) - Term Project - Fall 2025
Objectives:
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Model and identify high-risk flood hazard areas within the Animas River watershed.
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Provide a holistic analysis, using high-resolution, authoritative data when available, effectively capturing accurate snapshots of the current watershed and associated features.
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Analyze potentially affected demographics to ascertain whether specific communities are more affected than others by the risk of flooding.
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Risk factors will focus on readily available environmental and physical variables, such as slope, elevation, hydrological features, and proximity to impervious surfaces.
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Summary:
The Animas River, which flows 126 miles from the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado to the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico, has unique characteristics and a tumultuous history. Covering a total of 1,357 sq. mi., the Animas River Watershed includes the town of Silverton, CO and cities of Durango, CO, Aztec, NM, and Farmington, NM (New Mexico Environment Department 2016).
The main channel, the Animas River, is undammed and free flowing, with one dam on the Florida River tributary (i.e., Lemon Reservoir) and one on the Basin Creek tributary (i.e., Lake Nighthorse). Providing a valuable natural resource for agriculture, ecology, and recreation, the physical geography of this watershed also presents potential hazard to populations that rely on it, suggesting the need to further investigate the associated risks.
San Juan County GIS - ArcGIS Enterprise
County of San Juan, NM - October 2023 to March 2024
I led the administration of a multi-machine ArcGIS Enterprise deployment (v.11.1 and 11.3), supporting enterprise geodatabases housed in SQL Server. This environment allowed me to develop a wide range of GIS products, from internal mapping tools that streamlined staff workflows to publicly accessible web applications designed to enhance citizen engagement. I worked closely with various departments to modernize data systems, ensuring that our GIS infrastructure met the evolving needs of the County.
One of my most challenging projects involved the migration of an existing but dysfunctional deployment of ArcGIS Enterprise v11.1 in a disaster recovery situation. New to the GIS Manager position at the time, this fast-paced learning process was a true trial by fire, but using Esri documentation and a few weeks of preparation I was able to perform the migration successfully.
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After migrating the deployment to a fresh set of virtualized servers, an upgrade from v11.1 to v11.3 was planned and executed, refreshing the County's internal GIS and preparing the department for another migration from web apps and maps built with WebApp Builder to Experience Builder.
Cultural Areas of Critical Concern Realignment Project
Bureau of Land Management - Conservation Legacy (2022-2023)
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As part of my AmeriCorps internship with the BLM's Farmington Field Office, I performed analysis and remedied polygon boundaries used by the field office to designate areas of critical environmental concern.
The field office identified that the state office applied some maintenance to the ACECs shifting and snapping them to updated versions of the PLSS. For many resources, this is inconsequential. However, for cultural resources, this maintenance action exposed the possibility that the altered ACECs no longer fully contained the resource(s) they were intended to protect. In addition to the resource itself, many ACECs likely include a buffer intended to protect the resource. Even if the resource is still contained, the intent of the once-apparent buffer may no longer stand true.
Phoenix Country Club Revitalization
ASU - Geodesign & Urban Planning Practicum (2022)
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Geodesign is a design and planning method which tightly couples the creation of design proposal with impact simulations informed by geographic contexts, systems thinking, and digital technology. In a practicum class setting, this Geodesign project started with a request for proposal and ended with a final land use plan utilizing best practices in Geodesign methods. Working as small teams to complete this final project, we collected geographic data, conducted land suitability analysis, created public participation plans, and conducted cost analysis.
Risk Analysis of the
Defensive Sites of Dinétah
ASU - Geographic Information Science III (2022)
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This cumulative academic project attempts to answer the following question using advanced understanding of vector and raster analysis tools and open-source, accurate datasets:
Which pueblitos of northern New Mexico, or defensive sites of Dinétah, are most at risk to damage from erosion and land degradation caused by both natural and human impact?