Native Plant Society of New Mexico Native Plant Society of New Mexico

Charles Jackson is a geomorphometrist, remote sensing scientist and geographer. Recently, Jackson has developed a new theory of spatiotemporal things and how we make geographical sense of them.

Bosques, mountains, dust storms, global warming and its climatic entities, coastlines, cottonwoods, pines, aspens, aspen groves, wetlands, dunes, playas, the Anthropocene and the twilight zones of caves are all examples of what Jackson refers to as “notoriously vague things.” These things, Jackson claims, require new philosophical systems to both take them seriously and provide coherent and precise accounts of them. This is what Jackson now calls a “non-representationally realist geography,” which more or less began with mapping vegetation while at UNM over a decade ago.

Part philosophy, part geography and part science, Charlie will discuss some of the problems with the twentieth-century conceptualizations of digital representation and climate science, using examples from border region dust storms and the climatic entities of North America to the 3D reconstructions of caves at El Malpais National Monument and, most recently, the bat-compatible closures being constructed at abandoned mines throughout the Coronado National Forest in southeastern Arizona.

Regular monthly chapter meetings are held on first Wednesdays at 7 PM and are held at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque, 1801 Mountain Road NW. Free and open to the public.