David M. Lawrence

I am a bit difficult to describe. I am a journalist, author of two books (Upheaval from the Abyss: Ocean Floor Mapping and the Earth Science Revolution, published by Rutgers University Press in 2002; and Huntington's Disease, published by Chelsea House in 2009), and scientist. My education is diverse, ranging from biology, ecology, and geography to journalism. I have taught biology, geography, and related subjects at several colleges in the Richmond, Va., area; now I teach geography at Virginia State University.

My journalistic specialties are a rather odd combination of science and sports writing. In addition to my book, my writing has appeared in publications such as The Science of Dune: An Unauthorized Exploration into the Real Science Behind Frank Herbert’s Fictional Universe and The Science of Michael Crichton: An Unauthorized Exploration into the Real Science behind the Fictional Worlds of Michael Crichton (both published by BenBella Books in 2008), the magazines Geotimes (now Earth), The Lancet, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Mercator's World (sadly, no longer with us), and Vegetarian Times; in encyclopedias such as the Encyclopedia of the Developing World, the Encyclopedia of Genetics, the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Magill's Encyclopedia of Science: Plant Life, Magill's Medical Guide, and the World History Encyclopedia; in newspapers such as The (Charlottesville, Va.) Daily Progress, The (Newport News, Va.) Daily Press, the Miami Herald, the (Parsippany, N.J.) Daily Record, the (Petersburg, Va.) Progress-Index, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, The (Shreveport, La.) Times, The Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat, and the (Norfolk, Va.) Virginian-Pilot; and on radio programs Our Ocean World and MicrobeWorld.

For several years I have worked to promote literacy and literature in the Richmond, Va., metropolitan area. I have served as a member of the board of directors of James River Writers, a non-profit organization that has organized the annual James River Writers Conference at the Library of Virginia. James River Writers is involved in other activities in which aspiring writers get to mix with professional writers and performers to learn the craft of writing, as well as to practice it (if they dare).

As a scientist, my interests began primarily in biogeography and forest ecology, with an emphasis on using tree-ring analysis to tackle questions regarding the distribution and environmental history of tree species. I have since added freshwater and marine ecology to my interests. Over the years I have worked as a consultant to the Environmental Protection Agency and the USDA Forest Service, and as a staff member of Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. My academic writing has appeared in the Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, the Canadian Journal of Forest Research, Tree-Ring Research, and the Virginia Journal of Science.

Personally, I'm more than a bit of a flake. My private interests are as diverse as my professional ones, including music (pretty much anything but elevator music), writing (of course, just don't ask me how far I've come with my screenplays or novel), photography, fishing (I've finally learned to fly fish), scuba diving, hiking, genealogy, and more other things than any sensible person could cram into one lifetime.

People often ask where the name "Fuzzo" comes from -- some who have seen me with my mane of slowly graying hair think the name applies to me. It doesn't. The original Fuzzo was the late, great Curly (above), who died several years ago and who is still sorely missed.

Curly wasn't the only fuzzo in the world. Check out The Astonishing Fuzzo!

CLIMate-VEGetation models for WINdows (CLIMVEGWIN) runs several models for predicting vegetation type based on readily available climate data. It can also be used to generate climate diagrams for sites from which suitable climate data are available.

For more information, go to my CLIMate-VEGetation modelsl for WINdows page.

I Ching for Windows is a program I wrote for myself to cast I Ching hexagrams. The hexagrams contained can be used for the purposes of either divination or (in my case) mediation.

Hexagram and trigram descriptions are based on Richard Wilhelm's The I Ching: Or Book of Changes (translated by Cary F. Baynes and published by Princeton Universitiy Press).

For more information, go to my I Ching for Windows page.

Many researchers could benefit from the use of Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) data. But one of the problems they face with the data (other than downloading and uncompressing/unzipping those monster-size data files) is extracting data from the stations/regions they need.

There is some extraction code available on the GHCN download sites, but it isn't user friendly nor is it completely functional. Therefore I have reworked an extraction program I developed while at the Tree-Ring Laboratory at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The original versions of ClimExWin were written in Fortran, but this new version—a full-featured Windows version—is written in Free Pascal using the Lazarus Integrated Development Environment. It represents a complete overhaul of the original code. In addition, the additional help documentation was upgraded to the new Windows HTML Help format.

The current ClimExWin can, like its predecessor, search and extract data from GHCN1 and GHCN2 files. Unlike its predecessor, it can also extract data from GHCN3 files.

For more information go to my Global Historical Climate Network Utilities Page.