Data for: Planning for a future of changes: prioritizing areas for conservation of small mammals in the Caatinga, Brazil

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.