Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) propagation can severely weaken the accuracy of ranging and localization in wireless location systems. NLOS bias mitigation techniques have recently been proposed to relieve the NLOS effects, but positively rely on the capability to accurately distinguish between LOS and NLOS propagation scenarios. This paper proposes an energy-capture-based NLOS identification method for LDR-UWB systems, based on the analysis of the characteristics of the channel impulse response (CIR). With this proposed energy capture method, the probability of successfully identifying NLOS is much improved than the existing methods, such as the kurtosis method, the strongest path compare method, etc. This NLOS identification method can be employed in adaptive modulation scheme to decrease bit error ratio (BER) level for certain signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The BER performance with the adaptive modulation can be significantly enhanced by selecting proper modulation method with the knowledge of channel information from the proposed NLOS identification method.