Projects

Growing up in hurricane-prone Houston, TX has made natural disasters a primary interest of mine as shown in my own projects.

2003 Cedar Fire Case Study

The 2003 Cedar Fire in San Diego County, California was the largest the state had ever seen until the more recent Mendocino Complex and Thomas wildfires occurred in 2018 and 2017, respectively. With wildfires becoming increasingly common, this study focuses on how post-fire regrowth is affected by precipitation and topography of the area.

Landsat data, precipitation data, and a hillshade of California were geoprocessed in QGIS to identify relationships between post-fire regrowth and precipitation and topography. Differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR), differenced Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (dNDVI), interpolated precipitation, and slope analysis images were created in QGIS to understand the regrowth or lack thereof from 2003 to 2019.

Brazos River and Surfside, Tx Case Study

Since the Brazos River dilutes nearby water at its mouth and changes the salinity, it must
also alter other aspects of the ocean as well. Water samples were collected on the beachside and bayside of Surfside, Texas and tested for salinity, pH, nitrate and ammonia concentration since these variables determine the fish species and population that can live in these waters. Descriptive statistics were calculated to understand the characteristics of the collected data. The measured variables were also graphed against the distance between each sample point and the mouth of the Brazos River. Explanatory Regression was used to identify relationships between the measured variables and the salinity.