ABSTRACT: Most ecosystem services research has been disciplinary, site-based, and provincial to delimited single system boundaries. Although this stream of research still holds value to advance the understanding of numerous benefits of ecosystems and their dynamics, it is becoming more essential to understand the full range of flows moving across systems, time and spaces as the world gets more connected in multiple fronts. The notion of telecoupling supports this knowledge base as an integrative way to study coupled human and natural systems that are linked over long distances, and has been proved convincing in framing problems in many studies. This study examines the applicability of telecoupling framework in ecosystem services research with a case example of Texas rangeland ecosystem services. Rangeland ecosystem services are unique and pivotal in the context of land preservation and watershed health. They influence, and are influenced by, land management practices in a direct manner and play a key role in sustaining the livelihoods of the largest share of society. Along with the known benefits and services that rangeland ecosystems provide (e.g., cattle grazing, food production, open viewscape, clean water, carbon sequestration), the interaction between the ecological and associated human systems and invisible trajectories of ecosystem service flows across distant systems will be investigated using the lens of the telecoupling conceptual framework. By exploring the defining components of the telecoupling framework (e.g., systems, agents, flows, causes, and effects) in the larger system context, this study attempts to seek the potential to better address the issue of how ecosystem services are connected and transferred in the production-benefit cycle, and to rightly answer how to identify, prioritize, and respond to the opportunities and threats to the sustainable management of rangeland ecosystems in arid regions.
