Machine Learning Reveals The Hidden Benefit Of Farmer Co-ops Asian Scientist Magazine

Their work is published in Environmental Research Letters. At the southern tip of the Himalayas, farmers in Himachal Pradesh graze cattle among rolling hills and forests. While policies to manage the region's forest have been but in place by the Indian government, the impact that these policies have had remains unclear. In this study, scientists led by Dr. Pushpendra Rana at the University of Illinois applied machine learning algorithms to examine natural resources policy and governance, evaluating how policies actually work on the ground. Using satellite images from NASA, Rana's machine learning algorithm was able to simultaneously evaluate policy effectiveness in over 200 forest management regions in Kangra, covering a 14-year period.