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Yampa River Flow Regulation Map

June 5, 2019

Maps

For 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...
PISCES range map updates 2017/2018

September 27, 2018

Maps

Final 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...
Hurricane Harvey Flooding Extent

September 1, 2017

Maps

After 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...
Amaptor - arcpy.mp/arcpy.mapping compatibility layer

February 2, 2017

Code

I 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...
Watershed Analysis in GIS: A Spatial Workbook

January 14, 2017

Maps, Projects, Teaching

I 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...
Hazus Flood Modelling

December 30, 2016

Maps

I 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...
Baton Rouge Flooding Static Map

August 19, 2016

Maps

I 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.
Baton Rouge Flooding Detection

August 19, 2016

Maps

In 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...
Crop Economics Data Exploration Map

November 30, 2015

Maps

http://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...
PISCES Species Range Interactive Map Viewer

October 11, 2015

Maps

I 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...
PISCES Software

February 27, 2015

Code, Maps

This slideshow requires JavaScript. PISCES 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,...
Tuolumne Meadows Virtual Field Trips

July 14, 2014

Technical

As 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,...
Rim Fire Comparison Viewer

September 30, 2013

Technical

http://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...
Time Lapse Hydrography (Streamlapse)

September 29, 2012

Code, Technical

Time 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...
Coshawk Land Restoration Decision Support

June 20, 2012

Maps, Technical

The 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...

GIS, Spatial Analysis, and Research

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 Python using both open source (gdal, geopandas) and proprietary (arcpy) packages depending on the need and project, but also have experience outside of that environment, having completed numerous analysis and visualization projects using QGIS, Earth Engine, Leaflet, D3, and more.

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 and see a selection of other projects below.

Preferred Desktop GIS Tools

Python with Geopandas, GDAL/OGR, and Xarray
GDAL/OGR
ArcGIS
QGIS

Preferred Web GIS Tools

Earth Engine
PostGIS
ArcGIS Online
Leaflet
D3.js
ArcGIS Server