AI can guide forest restoration, but challenges remain: Indian Forest Service officer Pushpendra Rana

12 min readJul 25, 2026 07:30 AM IST First published on: Jul 25, 2026 at 07:30 AM IST Pushpendra Rana is an Indian Forest Service officer in Himachal Pradesh who applies social science theories and analytical methods, including geospatial analysis and machine learning, to evaluate environmental policy outcomes. His work focuses on understanding how people and forests interact and using AI and machine learning to study environmental and social challenges, developing solutions to strengthen forest governance.