ABSTRACT
In this chapter, an index of Landscape Development Intensity (LDI) is presented as a tool to evaluate ecosystem health. The LDI was recently proposed by Brown and Vivas (2005) following earlier work of Brown (1980) and an evaluation of the relationship of development intensity to water quality in 172the St. Marks River watershed in Florida (Brown et al. 1998; Parker 1998). The LDI is an index based on nonrenewable areal empower density of land uses. The LDI has been used as a human disturbance gradient in developing wetland bio-indicators of ecosystem health (Lane and Brown 2006; Reiss 2006) and in developing a Stream Condition Index (Fore et al. 2007). Recently the LDI was tested as an indicator of human disturbance against a large wetland data set in Ohio (Mack 2006).
