The Snowy Owl Invades

If you are looking for a good example of the growing intersection of sustainability science and computer science I suggest taking a look at this fascinating description of the yearly winter invasion of Snowy Owl sitings. This year seems to be a big year but it is also undoubtedly the best documented year ever due to a project called eBird (ebird.org). The eBird project gathers information from professionals and thousands of amateur borders. The observations are compiled and analyzed in near real time to build an observation map. This kind of citizen science is becoming more and more possible using the Internet, wireless access to websites from the field and advanced machine learning techniques to analyze huge amounts or data. Exciting times for many fields of science ahead.