This book synthesizes knowledge from several fields that are crucial to sustainable rural development: the physical environment, biological and agricultural production, rural sociology and economics. It takes a systems perspective incorporating systems analysis, landscape analysis and soil, water, and land planning. Directed toward graduate students and professionals, it provides a source of information and concepts for those concerned with land and water policies and practice. It presents an integrated approach using practical and applicable models and methods and takes a middle position between an elementary conceptual approach to land and water management and a highly mathematically advanced treatise based exclusively on system modeling. The book is based on almost twenty years of experience in teaching a course on rural planning and the environment, the authors being specialists from universities, research institutions and companies in Europe and North America.

Inhalt

I Introduction.- 1. Planning As a Way of Achieving Sustainable Development.- II Bases for Resource Interpretation and Valuation in Land Planning.- 2. Information Systems for Rural Planning.- 3. Role of Land Surface Relief in Land Use Allocation.- 4. Climate As a Factor in Regional Planning.- 5. The Hydrological Cycle and the Role of Water in Mediterranean Environments.- 6. Evaluation of Soils for Land Use Allocation.- III Production Systems.- 7. Habitat Conservation.- 8. The Natural Systems: Potential Production and Forest Management.- 9. The Agricultural System: Potential Production and Environmental Consequences.- IV The Human Use of Rural Space.- 10. Human Organization in Rural Areas.- 11. Rural Development Engineering: Labourers of Development.- V Rural Economics and Economics of Natural Resources.- 12. The Farm and Rural Community As Economic Systems.- 13. Introduction to the Economics of Resource Use in Planning.- 14. Public Policies, Markets, and Externalities.- VI Systems and Land Planning Analysis.- 15. Land Use Allocation and Environmental Impact Assessment in Land Planning.- 16. Systems Analysis As a Tool for Rural Planning.- 17. Rural Planning: A Case Study.