What am I currently doing?
At present, I am working as an water resources assistant engineer at Hazen and Sawyer in Denver, Colorado. My role generally involves analyzing and modelling water resources data. I also help automate workflows and automate the generation of unimpaired inflows needed to drive the models we use.
I am interested in all things pertaining to Earth Sciences, but at present my primary focus is on hydrology and water resources. My current interest is how climate change influences future water availiablility, especially in the western United States. For full details on my past experience, see my resume.
Recent Experience
In the summer of 2019, I graduated from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where I acquired a Masters degree in Earth and Planetary Sciences. My research involved exploring the climatology and hydrology of the Rio Grande basin south of the San Marcial (New Mexico) stream gauge. I explored drought scenarios with respect to climate change and impacts on the streamflow in the Rio Grande. To accomplish this, I used bias corrected and downscaled CMIP5 climate data from the U.S Bureau of Reclamation. The climate model output is used in conjunction with a surface hydrology model to produce routed streamflow based on the climate model output. The routed streamflow values are “normalized” to match the statistics of the observed baseline period (1964-2013). This statistical parameterization is a simple and effective technique to produce realistic future inflow values without explicitly accounting for human impairments upstream of the San Marcial streamgage. I used these future inflow values in conjunction with a water balance model to assess future water resources management options.
Familiar Programs
- ArcMap and ArcGIS Pro ( used primarily for water resource analysis)
- Microsoft Office Suite
- MATLAB
- PYTHON 3, inlcuding the following packages:
- Numpy, Matplotlib, Pandas, Seaborn, Xarray, Climata, Requests, Bokeh, Plotly, StatsModels, Cartopy and Basemap
- RiverWare: River and Reservoir Monitoring Tool
- WEAP (Water Evaluation And Planning) modelling
- GoldSim: Dynamic Monte Carlo Simulation Software; Used for water management planning
- Power BI
- Google Earth Pro
- Interactive Groundwater Modelling Software
- Agisoft PhotoScan Pro
- Cloud Compare
Familiar Datasets
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation downscaled and bias corrected climate and hydrology datasets * USGS hydrologic datasets * NRCS streamflow forecasts * NOAA seasonal forecasts * National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) * Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 * USGS STATSGO soil data * USGS National Land Cover Data (NLCD) * Western Regional Climate Center Data (WRCC) * PRISM Climate Data * ability to work with files in netCDF format (via Python and MATLAB) * gathering geospatial data with UAV.
Published Works
First Author:
A copy of my entire Master’s thesis can be found here.
Coautored Papers:
Posters
Current Hobbies
- Hiking/Camping
- Travelling in general
- Skiing
- Woodworking
- Brewing Kombucha
- Board Games
- Both hearing and coming up with the most awful puns
- Reading (see list below for recent favorites):
| Title | Author |
|---|---|
| The Terror | Daniel Simmons |
| Hyperion Cantos | Daniel Simmons |
| The Lord of the Rings Trilogy | J.R.R. Tolkien |
| Reining in the Rio Grande | Fred M. Phillips, G. Emlen Hall, and Mary E. Black |
| Game of Thrones series | where’s that next book George? |
| Crime and Punishment | Fyodor Dostoevsky |
| Fight Club | Chuck Palahniuk |
| Earthcore | Scott Sigler |
| The Stormlight Archive Series | Brandon Sanderson |
| Mortality; Letters to a Young Contrarian | Christopher Hitchens |
| Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? | Philip K. Dick |
| Starship Troopers | Robert A. Heinlein |
| Animal Farm | George Orwell |