Asian Journal of Geographical Research

Aims: To characterise land-use and land-cover (LULC) change and compare highway-proximity gradients along the Mumbai–Agra National Highway in Nashik District, India. Study design: A descriptive, multi-temporal remote-sensing and geographical information system analysis.

Place and duration of study: Seven highway-intersected tahsils of Nashik District, with observations for 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021.
Methodology: Landsat imagery was classified into six LULC categories using an object-based image-analysis and Random Forest workflow. Class areas were compared across cumulative 2 km, 5 km and 10 km corridor zones and the seven-tahsil region. Mutually exclusive distance rings were derived by subtracting successive cumulative areas.

Results: The reported overall classification accuracies ranged from 91.8% to 94.1%. On the adopted analytical extents, mapped Built-up area increased from 8.74 to 287.54 km² within 2 km, from 23.92 to 563.12 km² within 5 km, from 54.16 to 735.89 km² within 10 km and from 92.64 to 1,318.52 km² across the seven tahsils. In 2021, mapped Built-up shares were 39.60%, 25.30% and 9.52% in the non-overlapping 0–2 km, >2–5 km and >5–10 km rings, respectively. During 2011–2021, annual expansion intensity reached 2.15% and 1.86% of ring area in the first two rings.

Conclusion: The classified maps show an increasingly pronounced association between Built-up concentration and highway proximity, with substantial expansion into the intermediate ring. The descriptive results support spatially differentiated corridor planning without isolating a causal highway effect.