A social-ecological systems approach to evaluating novel energy development on North American rangelands

Intensification and diversification of domestic energy production is being promoted as a strategy for ensuring energy security in North America. Many untapped domestic renewable and fossil fuel energy resources are associated with rangelands and developing them may affect the delivery of rangeland-based ecosystem services. Evaluating such impacts is hindered by complex interactions among factors influencing ecosystem functionality. The Integrated Social, Economic and Ecological Conceptual (ISEEC) framework facilitates disentanglement of such complexity. The ISEEC framework is presented as a tool to facilitate the systematic evaluation of energy development effects on interactions among the biophysical and socioeconomic components of rangeland ecosystems.