I'm an experienced GIS professional, with a primary focus on decision support, remote sensing, automation, optimization, custom software, and tool development. I primarily work in ArcGIS and code in Python using the arcpy package, but also have experience outside of that environment, having completed analysis projects using QGIS and Earth Engine, and visualization projects using Leaflet and D3.
Many of my projects live primarily as code, with results that aren't available as maps or cartographic products. You can browse those projects on the Code page, see a partial list of projects I've worked on at CWS here, and see a selection of other projects below.
Preferred Desktop GIS Systems
- ArcGIS
- QGIS
- GDAL/OGR
Preferred Web GIS
- ArcGIS Server
- PostGIS
- Leaflet
- D3.js
- Google Earth Engine
- ArcGIS Online
Selected Projects
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June 5, 2019For a class, I assessed flow regulation on the Yampa River in western Colorado and the adjoining segments of the Green River in Colorado and eastern Utah. I used a database of dams in the region from the Central Arizona... -
September 27, 2018Final map for publication ranges blended onto hillshade Northern coastal roach range Clear lake roach rnage Northern roach range Southern coastal roach range Mountain whitefish range Northern California coast summer steelhead range In 2017 and 2018, I utilized our PISCES software to generate new maps for CalTrout's State... -
September 1, 2017After Hurricane Harvey hit, the Natural Hazards Research Group wanted to assess the extent of the flooding as it related to mapped floodplains, as part of ongoing research into flood insurance and hazard mitigation nationwide to inform the National Flood... -
February 2, 2017I write a lot of spatial data analysis code using ArcGIS's Python package, arcpy. Sometimes we need to automate map generation as part of that work, but with the split of the arcpy.mapping library between ArcMap and ArcGIS Pro, developers... -
January 14, 2017I receive a number of requests for additional instruction from former students who have taken one class or another. I decided to combine my tutorials for water and ecosystem analysis in ArcGIS into a single book on LeanPub, which allows... -
December 30, 2016I led a team of people using FEMA's Hazus-MH (Multi-Hazard) software to model flood risk to 2 dozen Illinois communities as part of a larger project to measure perceived vs actual risk of flood in those communities. Hazus can be... -
August 19, 2016I created this static map as part of Nicholas Pinter's Natural Hazards Mitigation Group's analysis of flood inundation in the 2016 flooding in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The corresponding interactive map can be found here. -
August 19, 2016In response to flooding in Baton Rouge, Louisiana as a result of storms in August 2016, we detected flooding using satellite imagery to determine the extent of inundation as it compared to mapped floodplains. The darker blue shows flood inundation... -
November 30, 2015http://nicksantos.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/crop_economics.mp4 For this project, I guided a first time web mapper in how to present the data visually and how to implement that presentation in code. The map uses Leaflet and D3 to provide interactive visualization of California economic data on... -
October 11, 2015I built a web map viewer for the PISCES California fish species range data. The data is served by ArcGIS Server and the viewer is a mix of a coworker's custom map viewer that uses the ArcGIS API and site-specific... -
February 27, 2015PISCES is a set of ArcGIS tools and data for managing and analyzing the ranges of California's 133 native fish taxa. Data is stored as a standard relational database, increasing the power over many typical GIS approaches, and allowing for... -
July 14, 2014As part of a class where students gained extensive experience in the field, my colleague Sarah Yarnell led a team of researchers at the Center for Watershed Sciences that developed a virtual field trip as a pre-field trip teaching tool,... -
September 30, 2013http://nicksantos.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/rim_fire.mp4 The UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences has long term study sites at the confluence of the Tuolumne and Clavey rivers, near where the Rim Fire of 2013 started. As part of these long term study sites, we captured a... -
September 29, 2012Time Lapse Hydrography - Tuolumne and Clavey Rivers 2012 with Temperatures from Center for Watershed Sciences on Vimeo. Our office put out time lapse cameras and data loggers on many rivers in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains in an attempt to...
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June 20, 2012The Center for Watershed Sciences had a project to model various scenarios for land restoration in the Cosumnes River floodplain, largely in the context of the Swainson's Hawk. Toward the end of the project, we wanted to develop a decision...