Conserving and managing global natural capital requires an understanding of the complexity of flows of ecosystem services across geographic boundaries. Failing to understand and to incorporate these flows into national and international ecosystem assessments leads to incomplete and potentially skewed conclusions, impairing society’s ability to identify sustainable management and policy choices. In this paper, we synthesise existing knowledge and develop a conceptual framework for analysing interregional ecosystem service flows. We synthesise the types of such flows, the characteristics of sending and receiving socio-ecological systems, and the impacts of ecosystem service flows on interregional sustainability. Using four cases (trade of certified coffee, migration of northern pintails, flood protection in the Danube watershed, and information on giant pandas), we test the conceptual framework and show how an enhanced understanding of interregional telecouplings in socio-ecological systems can inform ecosystem service-based decision making and governance with respect to sustainability goals.

保护和管理全球自然资本需要了解跨地理边界的生态系统服务流的复杂性。未能理解这些流并将其纳入国家和国际生态系统评估会导致结论不完整且可能会产生偏差，从而损害社会确定可持续管理和政策选择的能力。在本文中，我们综合了现有知识并开发了用于分析区域间生态系统服务流的概念框架。我们综合了此类流量的类型，社会生态系统发送和接收的特征，以及生态系统服务流量对区域间可持续性的影响。使用了四个案例（认证咖啡贸易，北部长尾猴迁徙，多瑙河流域的防洪，