This study uncovers latent socio-environmental impacts of Uttarakhand’s massive Char Dham Expressway project. It introduces an innovative framework fusing machine learning with satellite monitoring to assess shifting household vulnerabilities and land-use nature along three segments of the corridor. By analysing pre-development, construction, and post-development phases, the findings show how excavation and infrastructure work directly disrupt local water bodies and agriculture-based livelihoods. Challenging conventional, context-agnostic environmental assessments, this approach offers a powerful, data-driven methodology to better understand and mitigate the complex community impacts of large-scale infrastructure developments in geo-hydrologically fragile landscapes.
