Instructor · Environmental Hazards Modeler · Geospatial Data Scientist
CIRES Earth and ESIIL Labs · University of Colorado Boulder
I am a hydrogeologist and environmental hazards modeler working at CIRES Earth and ESIIL Labs at the University of Colorado Boulder. As part of the Education Team, I am one of the instructors for our Graduate Earth Data Science Certificate program, ESIIL Stars, and the Data Short Course. I also participate in the many Hackathons we offer throughout the year. My work focuses on predictive modeling, hydrogeologic analysis, and geospatial data science. I build reproducible computational pipelines that translate environmental complexity into actionable models.
Current CIRES-funded research includes Shadow Ecology - a deep learning method I'm developing to investigate whether model residuals can be leveraged to improve predictions in data- and sensor-poor regions. I am also an educator at Earth Lab and ESIIL; educational materials, including data cubes and several modeling pipelines I've taught and/or developed can be found here: ESIIL Education.
I am also the co-owner and primary data scientist of Daear Consulting, LLC, currently partnering with Oglala Lakota College on a USDA-NIFA funded grant to build hydrologic and agricultural data cubes for analysis, teaching, and Tribal data sovereignty workflows.
As a Tribal college graduate and former Tribal college faculty member at Oglala Lakota College, I am committed to sovereignty-aligned workflows and reproducible science that centers Tribal partners in environmental research.
| Focus | Featured work | What it offers |
|---|---|---|
| Teach | Systems at Play · Scientists Who Code | Accessible, reusable computational learning materials that connect code, modeling, and systems thinking for students and interdisciplinary learners. |
| Research | Shadow Ecology · He Sapa Twin | Examples of geospatial and remote-sensing analysis, with an emphasis on reproducible workflows and interpretable computational methods. |
| Collaborate | Daear Consulting · Oglala Lakota College | Partnership-oriented data science and educational projects grounded in reproducibility, practical learning, and sovereignty-aligned environmental research. |
- Hydrogeologic and Earth systems modeling
- Fire–vegetation predictive modeling
- Multispectral remote sensing integration
- Geospatial structure in model residuals
- Geospatial data engineering & data cubes
- Environmental hazard risk modeling
- Reproducible computational workflows
- Tribal Data Science
- Tribal Data Sovereignty
I created a series exploring common gaming algorithms and systems design concepts here: Systems at Play
Languages & Environments
Python R C Fortran Bash SQL/MySQL Jupyter VS Code Linux
Geospatial
ArcGIS Pro QGIS GDAL/OGR Rasterio GeoPandas Shapely Fiona PyProj rtree OSMnx H3 GeoPy GeoTessera GeoTessellation Contextily PyDeck Datashader ENVI EarthPy Remote Sensing AlphaEarth Foundations
Data Engineering
Pandas NumPy Xarray Dask Zarr APIs STAC Data Cubes Cloud-native data structures Workflow automation
Machine Learning
Scikit-learn PyTorch TensorFlow Fuzzy Machine Learning Statistical Modeling Bayesian Methods Predictive Modeling Feature Engineering Deep Learning OpenCLIP / RemoteCLIP TorchGeo
Cloud & Data Access Infrastructure
AWS (S3, EC2) Docker HPC/SLURM CyVerse Planetary Computer VSI/VSICURL earthaccess Cloud-native geospatial workflows Version-controlled reproducible pipelines
Scientific Computing, Modeling & Analysis
SciPy Statsmodels Parallel Computing Large Geospatial Datasets Environmental Modeling NetworkX MODFLOW Visual MODFLOW ParFlow AQTESOLV Stella 7 CESM
Visualization
Matplotlib Seaborn HoloViews/hvPlot Folium Tableau
Remote Sensing & Earth Observation
Landsat Sentinel-2 MODIS EMIT Hyperspectral Copernicus NLCD SSURGO NHD NWIS NOAA 3DEP/LiDAR
Version Control
Git GitHub
Platforms
Linux Windows HPC (CURC, ACCESS) Cloud (AWS S3, CyVerse)
| Role | Description |
|---|---|
| Instructor | Earth Data Science Graduate Certificate courses, ESIIL Stars, Data Short Course CU Boulder |
| Principal Investigator | Shadow Ecology: Model Residuals as Signal, CIRES, CU Boulder |
| Owner / Data Scientist | Daear Consulting, LLC USDA-NIFA grant with Oglala Lakota College |
| Participant | American Geophysical Union Voices in Science |
| Former Faculty | Oglala Lakota College |
PhD, Geology and Geological Engineering · 2021
South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
BS, Interdisciplinary Earth and Environmental Sciences · 2013
Oglala Lakota College
If you're looking for my "old" GitHub, find it here Yawapi