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The mountainous rural communities of northern Vietnam have benefited the least from the rapid development resulting from the doi moi economic reforms of the 1980's. The technical, economic and social changes that accompanied that transition, combined with the extreme biophysical heterogeneity of northern mountains, has led to extremely complex agrarian trends that challenge traditional diagnostic approaches.An interdisciplinary team of researchers has been working in Bac Kan province since 1998, studying changes in land use in order to better understand the needs and opportunities of farmers. Several diagnostic tools were combined ( i.e. monographic studies, multi-agent models, role-play, and geographic information systems) to analyse and represent interactions between farmers' strategies, the institutions that control access to and use of resources, and the biophysical and socio-economic environment.