DOI: 10.5061/dryad.2jm63xsxh
title: Data for: Planning for a future of changes: prioritizing areas for conservation of small mammals in the Caatinga, Brazil

description: Human land use and climate change are two of the main threats affecting
 biodiversity, especially in arid/semiarid regions. The most effective way
 to protect the species in these ecosystems against these threats is
 through the delimitation of Protected Areas (PAs). However, such PAs need
 to be targeted cost-efficiently and consider future climate change. We
 identify priority areas to preserve small mammal species in the Caatinga
 in the present and in the future of climate change. We also evaluate how
 well these priority areas are protected by current PAs and identify ways
 forward to improve their protection. We use ecological niche models and
 Zonation spatial prioritisation software to identify the top 30% priority
 areas to preserve small mammal species under current climate and land use
 scenarios, besides considering optimistic and pessimistic scenarios of
 future climate change. We also evaluate how much these priority areas are
 covered by current PAs, identify ways to further improve their protection
 using hierarchical mask analysis, and evaluate species mean distribution
 coverage. The consequences of climate change will not hugely impact the
 distribution of priority areas for species conservation in the Caatinga.
 Around 13% of the identified priority areas overlap with current PAs, and
 planning the expansion of PAs considering integral protection areas
 increases the coverage of priority areas to more than 18% and captures
 more than 72% of species-suitable areas. Our prioritisations take
 into account climate change and provide low risk if conducted as a
 "no-regrets" conservation action. These priority areas are
 poorly supported by the Brazilian PA system, and need of further
 protection. One cost-effective option could be to upgrade some Sustainable
 Use PAs into more restrictive ones. Securing these priority areas helps
 preserve the long-term ecosystem functioning and to prevent biodiversity
 loss in a changing world.
description: # Data for: Planning for a future of changes: prioritizing areas for
 conservation of small mammals in the Caatinga, Brazil
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2jm63xsxh](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2jm63xsxh) Species occurrence point used in Ecological Niche Models from the article "**Planning for a future of changes: prioritizing areas for conservation of small mammals in the Caatinga, Brazil**", published at Diversity and Distributions. ## Description of the data and file structure This database consists of a CSV file containing 3 columns. The first column corresponds to the names of the species analyzed, and the following to the decimal geographic coordinates (latitude, longitude, WGS84) ## Sharing/Access information Please cite the article and this dataset when using this data. Article: [https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.13895](https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.13895) Dataset: [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2jm63xsxh](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2jm63xsxh) ### Version changes **20-jan-2025:** The dataset was uploaded again, with no changes, to correct a bug. README file update with the changes previously made.