Traditional methods of evaluating evaporation provide an estimate of the maximum or potential rate of evaporation determined on the basis of climatic conditions. Methods such as these are appropriate for open water or fully saturated soil surfaces. Actual rates of evaporation from unsaturated soil surfaces are generally greatly reduced relative to the potential rate of evaporation. A theoretical model for predicting the rate of evaporation from soil surfaces is presented in this paper. The model is based on a system of equations for coupled heat and mass transfer in soil. Darcy's Law and Fick's Law are used to describe the flow of liquid water and water vapour, respectively. Heat flow is evaluated on the basis of conductive and latent heat fluxes. Dalton's Law is used to calculate the rate of soil evaporation to the atmosphere based on the suction at the soil surface. The soil–atmosphere model was used to predict soil evaporation rates, water-content profiles, and temperature profiles for a controlled column evaporation test over a 42 day period. The values computed by the soil–atmosphere model agreed well with the values measured for two columns of Beaver Creek sand in the evaporation test. Key words : modelling, evaporation, unsaturated, soil surfaces.