ABSTRACT
The objective of this chapter is to discuss three methods that have been used jointly to analyse the contemporary spatial dynamics of small rural territories and to explore how they may be integrated. The landscape is emphasised as the primary level of organisation and perception with respect to a small rural community’s sphere of activity. This space is comprised of a combination of repetitive yet interacting landscape elements (Forman and Godron, 1986). The landscape element, defined morphologically, is the smallest spatial unit presenting uniform structure and function. Such a unit allows visible features in the landscape to be related to the combination of biophysical and human factors that produce it. In this chapter, the SEU is conceived as a landscape element defined by land ownership rather than as an aggregation of people (though the role of people has influenced the dimension of this element). As a rule, the landscape element is the finest unit available for spatio-temporal analysis. Often the size of a single land-use parcel, the interactive combination of these units can hypothetically reconstitute land-use for a given area over time.
