This handbook presents the foundations of modern rural analysis. The first part of the book presents a comprehensive description of the elements of rural analysis, providing the basis for a synthetic view of rural landscapes in the second part. Included is a comprehensive description and explanation of the rural landscapes from throughout the world, which leads to a complete management scheme for rural landscapes.

Dr Francisco J. Tapiador is senior scientist in Earth Sciences and lectures in the Department of Environmental Sciences at UCLM (Toledo, Spain). He graduated in Geography and holds a master's degree in Cadastral Cartography and a PhD in Physics. He has worked as professional geographer in large regional development projects, developing both guidelines and policies for regional and rural planning, and implementing geographical information and management systems. His research in rural issues spans from Climate Change to Historical GIS and Remote Sensing, having written more than 50 research papers in the last 5 years. His findings have been published in highly cited journals (Landscape and Urban Planning, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Geophysical Research Letters and International Journal of Remote Sensing, amongst others). He has been a visiting scholar at the universities of Barcelona (Spain), Cambridge (UK) and The Sorbonne (France).

Introduction. The Rural Areas of the World

1 Methodological Notes on Analysis, Synthesis and Management
2 The Measuring Process in Rural Analysis
Part I. Elements of the Analysis: 3 Environmental Elements in Rural Analysis
4 Dynamics and Processes of the Environmental Elements
5 Anthropic Elements in Rural Analysis
6 Dynamics and Processes of the Anthropic Elements
Part II. The Rural Mosaic of the World. A Geographical Synthesis: 7 A Synthetic Approach
8 A Cartographic Overview of the Agrarian World
9 Regional Issues in the Rural Areas of the World
Part III. Rural Management The Applied Approach: 10 Approaches to Management
11 Management Tools: Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Expert Systems
12 The Concept of Rural Quality of Life
13 The Rural Areas in the Structure of the Territory
14. Rural Planning and Sustainability
15 Involving People in the Process
16 The Decision Guidelines Making
17 Public Participation and Information Technologies
18 Global Change Issues in Rural Planning
19 Public Dissemination Tools: An Example for Inventories
20 A Rural Plan
Appendix. Templates for a Rural Project
List of Figures
List of Tables
Color Plates.