Charles Nils Burnett, PhD
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Department of Geography
University of Victoria
Email: cburnett [at] uvic.ca
Office: +1 (250) 590-6277
Skype: mapswest

Short Bio

I'm a professional geographer with experience in forest ecology, GIS/mapping and community engagement. I have provided creative, innovative and community-based solutions to land and marine management challenges since 2004. My educational background includes an MSc in Geography (University of Victoria), and a PhD in natural resource management & conservation planning (Department of Geography, University of Turku, Finland). In 2002-03 I was a Marie Curie Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Geography, Universität Salzburg

Teaching Interests:

indigenous geographies, collaborative mapping, community engagement using maps, cartography, GIS

Research Interests:

indigenous geographies, collaborative mapping, community engagement using maps, landscape scale forest ecology, ecoforestry, public participation GIS, e-governance

Seeking a Supervisor?

I would be interested in supervising your honours thesis or be on your MSc/MA/PhD committee if your interests intersect mine. Contact me if you are exploring these research areas:

• First Nations land use planning, referrals tracking, decisions support
• rural and urban community capacity building using mapping
• spatio-temporal modelling of natural and anthropogenic process using SELES
• neogeography (Web 2.0 views/uses of spatialized data)

Some of my Affiliations and Projects

See my Full CV for more background information. I...

• Am a sessional instructor at UVic Geography, and have taught GEOG491 Indigenous Geography and GEOG328 GIS for Natural Science.
• Am an affiliate researcher with the Coastal and Oceans Resources Analysis Laboratory here at UVic Geography.
• Have a consulting company based in Victoria called Geomemes Research Inc.
• Have worked extensively with and coordinated (2007-09) a local community-based engagement non-profit: Common Ground Community Mapping Project.
• Am the architect and maintainer of the Spatially Explicit Landscape Event Simulator (SELES) Community web site; www.SELES.info.
• Volunteer time as web site designer/maintainer for a local charity called Runners of Compassion.
• Am a member of the Canadian Association Geographers and the Society for Conservation GIS.
• Am an module writer and instructor for the GIS distance learning program called UNIGIS.

Favorite Quotations

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.
--Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
-- Arthur Koestler (1905-1983)