I had no idea that California was a huge producer of rice until I listened to a fascinating podcast on MIT Technology Review. Tim O’Reilly was talking about data as a public good that could help society as a whole make good decisions, rather than just serving the business interests of tech entrepreneurs. It is fascinating, and well worth listening to.

About halfway through the podcast, he mentioned a project that was using data to show water regulators and scientists when releasing water from dams could be most useful for helping migrating birds. It was only a brief mention, but it intrigued me enough that I wanted to learn more. 

So I dug around and thus found myself deep in some fascinating discussions about California water use, rice farming, migratory birds, and spawning salmon – not to mention citizen scientists who track birds using an app called ebird. It is a story that gives hope for balancing conservation and agriculture through technology, big data, and short-term and comparatively inexpensive answers, and it could transform conservation work in global ecosystems around the world – particularly those areas where land is already intensively used.