Development of a plant based riparian index of biotic integrity (RIBI) for assessing the ecological condition of highland streams in East Africa

The study of riparian plant communities along running streams offers information on the state of habitat and can help increase our knowledge on the use of bioindicators. We developed a riparian index of biotic integrity (RIBI) to evaluate the conditions of highland streams in response to anthropogenic disturbances in the southwest Ethiopian highland. To construct RIBI, we evaluated 22 potential plant metrics. Disturbance was quantified for each...