Research & projects.
My work sits at the intersection of remote sensing, geospatial AI, and water infrastructure — using GIS to understand how people use land and manage resources, in New Mexico and beyond.
What I study
Water and wastewater infrastructure planning and management for communities and utilities.
Urbanization, sustainability, and forest degradation, and how they reshape landscapes over time.
Applying geospatial artificial intelligence and big data analysis to large-scale earth observation datasets.
Conservation of water resources and natural habitat management.
Asset management and infrastructure planning for small and rural water utilities.
Projects
Spatial-temporal analysis of Amazon rainforests
An ArcGIS StoryMap of the Amazon area in Colombia, built on big earth observation data. I used Python to run the spatial analysis and built an interactive JavaScript web map with time-series layers visualizing deforestation and socio-economic trends. Mentored by Dr. Liping Yang, Director of the UNM GeoAIR Lab (October 2023 – December 2024).
Earned the UNM ASSURE award and was presented at the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Conference (UROC).
Lead Service Line Inventory
Georeferenced and analyzed Landsat satellite imagery from Earth Explorer for a project on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, Arizona — determining whether homes were built before or after 1970 to help assess lead exposure risk. Completed as part of my work with the Southwest Environmental Finance Center.
Water & wastewater infrastructure mapping
Ongoing GIS mapping and digitization of drinking water and wastewater systems across New Mexico and other states, including supervised fieldwork and data collection with ArcGIS and Field Maps.
What drives it
I'm passionate about preserving the environment and improving resource management — both in Colombia, my home country, and in other communities facing water access and climate challenges. Geography gives me a way to make that concern concrete: measurable, mappable, and actionable.