Pedology, a branch of soil science has been often overlooked by those responsible for taking decisions for developing rational land use plans. One of the reasons may be due to the fact that pedology does not bring out striking and impressive results as is observed by the application of fertilizers, pesticides, new crop varieties and so on. The present endeavour highlights the fundamental concepts and applications of pedology with a view to developing proper understanding of the processes of evaluation of soils, their classification, identification of potentials and constraints, interpretation of data on soil survey and mapping and practical application for soil and water conservation towards alternate land use for optimizing agricultural production. The text is further enriched by incorporation of various recent developments in the field of Geo-informatics (RS, GPS, GIS) contributing immensely to the subject which are elaborately discussed with inclusion of specific case studies under Indian context. Due emphasis has also been given on the topic “Land Use Planning” which indeed is the ultimate goal of soil survey, classification and mapping.
