Rural areas are characterized by highly heterogeneous landscapes; rural mosaics, which are home to varying intensities of land-use and processes of deactivation and abandonment. The study discussed in this paper proposes a method for the integrated analysis of these rural areas which combines the analysis of land cover dynamics, using GIS, with an assessment of socio-economic dynamics, reconstructed through the combined use of indicators and local history. The method, applied to a socio-ecological system which is representative of the Mediterranean basin, is proposed as a tool to support sustainability processes and the territorialisation of rural polices.
Keywords: Landscape dynamics, land use change, rural development, rural socioecological systems, rural policies, rural resilience, land degradation, scrub encroachment