ABSTRACT
A new holistic, yet quantitative landscape ecology approach to environmental science was born from the availability of spatially referenced data and Geographic Information System (GIS). Scientists have recently begun developing a hierarchically organized, top-down approach for assessing the conditions of, and risks to, ecological resources in large areas (Griffith, 1998). This approach is referred to as the ecological indicators approach. First used in the Netherlands (Rotmans et al., 1994), the ecological indicators approach is now being applied in the U.S. by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (O’Neill et al., 1994; Schultze and Colby, 1994), U.S. Department of Agriculture (1994), U.S. Geological Survey (Battaglin and Goolsby, 1995), and multiple academic scientists (Rapport et al., 1985; Karr et al., 1986; Bedford and Preston, 1988; Hunsaker et al., 1990; Graham et al., 1991; Cairns and McCormick, 1992). Adopting the approach ourselves, we have gained valuable insight into factors influencing ecological health (Zhang et al., 1997, 1998) and integrity (Smallwood et al., 1998) at the county level. These spatially explicit indicators were relevant to legal compliance issues and useful for focusing planning and regulatory efforts on priority areas in the landscape.
