The Land Degradation Index (LDI) exploits remote sensing images, in conjunction with climatic and physiographic parametres, for assessing the landscape status with respect to its natural resources potential. Homogeneous land systems are identified and their status is expressed in terms of number of standard deviations from the population mean. The final values are then converted into 3 broad classes that indicate overgrown, normal and undergrown vegetation. These results were obtained from ESA's DesertWatch project.