Book excerpt: 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.