Blog — Brooks Groves

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Jul 24, 2026

10 min read

Remote Sensing ONDA Landsat Sentinel-1 Google Earth Engine Python Riparian

🌿 Eight Years Later, a 2018 Volunteer GIS Project Gets Its Answer

In April 2018 I sent a cold email to a nonprofit I had never worked with. Eight years later, I finally finished the project. A remote-sensing field report on three ONDA riparian restoration sites in eastern Oregon — 42 years of Landsat, a completely independent Sentinel-1 cross-check, and one two-sensor disagreement that turned out to be the signal.

Jul 10, 2026

10 min read

Hydrology Geospatial Wildfire Tuolumne County QGIS GRASS GIS MCP

🌊 Thirty Minutes, Fifty Years of Fire

A watershed and post-fire flood-risk analysis for Tuolumne County, California — 1,151 stream segments extracted from a 30m USGS DEM, 30 major fires from CAL FIRE FRAP overlaid on the network, and one small fire that broke out on Old Priest Grade above Groveland on the exact ground the model was studying, while it was studying it. A hydrology love letter to the county I grew up in — thirty minutes with QGIS, GRASS GIS, and Claude via MCP.

Jun 2026

6 min read

Wildfire WFIGS Pywikibot Python GitHub Actions Wikipedia

🔥 BdgrovesBot — A Wildfire Bot That Edits Wikipedia at 7am

Zero to live in a single day: a fully automated pipeline that watches WFIGS fire data and updates Wikipedia's Tuolumne County wildfire tables without a human in the loop. Python, Pywikibot, GitHub Actions, and pixi — through the authentication rabbit hole, a live test insert, and a BRFA filed by the book. Every morning at 7am Pacific the bot wakes up, checks the fire lines, and goes back to sleep.

Jul 8, 2026

14 min read

Wildfire GIS QGIS ArcGIS Pro Arizona NIFC

🔥 The Pocket Fire, Three Weeks In

26,803 acres. 51% contained. 1,238 personnel. Nineteen days in, the Pocket Fire has grown eighteenfold since the original report and become the largest Sedona-area burn since the 2014 Slide Fire. A Day 19 GIS field update — containment climb, command handoff to California IMT 6, and why officials say it may take the monsoon to finish.

Jun 2026

9 min read

Meteorology NEXRAD Python Wildfire GitHub Actions

🌪️ Sierra Nevada Alert Bot — Intel the Moment It Happens

It started as a question: could one person, with no server and no budget, watch an entire mountain range and know about every fire, flood, quake, and storm the moment it happened? Seven federal data streams on one free runner, plus a MetPy and Py-ART science toolkit with automatic NEXRAD signature detection. Posts to @SierraNevadaWX.

Apr 30, 2026

12 min read

Building AI Cloudflare JavaScript Geographer Stack

🍳 From a Pile of Bookmarks to a Searchable Cookbook

A one-tap recipe pipeline with Cloudflare Workers, Claude, and a static site. No database, no friction, versioned data for free.

Apr 9, 2026

7 min read

Archaeology Python LiDAR GitHub Actions

☀️ SOLSTICE — Watching the Same Sky Over Chaco Canyon

A 1054 CE supernova painted on a canyon wall. Pueblo Bonito's rear wall aligned true north within 0.1°. Casa Rinconada's northeast doorway catching the summer solstice sunrise at 66.5°. A live dashboard watching the same sky over the same canyon, updated every 12 hours.

Apr 9, 2026

7 min read

Geology USGS Python Leaflet

🌍 AFTERSHOCK — Real-Time U.S. Seismic Activity Monitor

Every magnitude 1.5+ earthquake in the US, updated every six hours from USGS ComCat. A dark cinematic map, state deep-dives, Hiroshima equivalent energy readout, and the personal backstory of growing up on the Melones Fault Zone in Tuolumne County.

Apr 2026

6 min read

Ecology iNaturalist Death Valley Leaflet

🐾 DIPODOMYS — A Data Portrait of Death Valley's Kangaroo Rats

Two kangaroo rat species, one valley, and what citizen science data from iNaturalist reveals about habitat partitioning in the hottest place on Earth. An interactive portrait built on live occurrence data.

Apr 2026

5 min read

Community GIS Leaflet Lakewood WA Civic Tech

🏠 Little Free Pantry — Mapping Food Access in Lakewood

Interactive Leaflet map for the Lakewood Rotary's Little Free Pantry network — 7 pantries providing 24/7 no-barrier food and hygiene access across Lakewood, Tillicum, and Steilacoom. GIS as community infrastructure.

Apr 7, 2026

8 min read

Remote Sensing Sentinel-2 GIS Python

🛰️ Sentinel Stockpile — The Economy You Can See From Space

12 months of ESA satellite imagery tracking lumber stockpiles at the Port of Longview, Washington. 47 hectares in July. 5 hectares in January. The Pacific Northwest timber supply chain, measured from orbit using free data and open tools.

Apr 7, 2026

6 min read

Meteorology Python GitHub Actions Pacific Northwest

🌡️ Weather Station — Four Climates, Zero Dollars, Half a Cup of Coffee

A real-time weather dashboard monitoring Lakewood, Groveland, Reno, and Death Valley. Wind compass, pressure trend arrows, NWS alerts, moon phase. Built before the coffee was done.

Apr 2026

7 min read

Volcanology Python USGS Kīlauea

🌋 PELE — Building a Live Kīlauea Dashboard for a Birthday Trip

43 eruption episodes, a webcam buried under 10 meters of tephra, and a cron job running every 6 hours. Real-time data from USGS HVO, YouTube livestream auto-discovery, and an episodic fountaining log going back to Christmas Eve 2024.

Apr 2, 2026

8 min read

FORTRAN Meteorology SNOTEL Pacific Northwest

FORTRAN, Snowpack, and the Language the Atmosphere Speaks

NWS runs FORTRAN. NCAR runs FORTRAN. ECMWF runs FORTRAN. So does a developer in Lakewood, WA — analyzing Cascade snowpack at 15% of normal, every morning, over coffee.

Apr 1, 2026

8 min read

COBOL Hydrology USGS Sierra Nevada

COBOL, Streamflow, and Artemis II

A 1959 language fetching live government telemetry, running in a cloud CI/CD pipeline, on the day four humans left Earth's orbit for the first time since 1972.

Apr 2026

7 min read

GIS LiDAR forge3d Python

Exploring forge3d With Washington LiDAR

A new GPU-accelerated terrain renderer built in Rust, shipped as Python wheels. Mount St. Helens, Crater Lake, and what 1-meter LiDAR does to a summit render.

Mar 31, 2026

5 min read

Python pixi GIS Environments

Why I Switched to pixi for Managing Python and R Environments

After years of conda headaches, a faster, more reproducible path to geospatial work. Lockfiles, cross-platform consistency, and no more environment corruption at the worst possible moment.

Mar 18, 2026

6 min read

Hydrology USGS GitHub Actions Sierra Nevada

Building a Live Streamflow Dashboard on a $0 Budget

GitHub Actions, USGS APIs, and a healthy respect for Pacific snowmelt. How the Sierra Streamflow Monitor became the architectural template for everything that followed.