Occurrence records of Brazilian freshwater turtles used to screen exposure to prospective hydropower development

GBIF-mediated occurrence records of native continental freshwater turtles in Brazil used in the study “River-network topology, cumulative pressure, and biological vulnerability in freshwater turtle exposure to hydropower expansion in Brazil". Occurrence data were retrieved through the GBIF public Occurrence Search API on 10 August 2026. The analytical scope comprised 30 native continental freshwater turtle species after taxonomic reconciliation against current Brazilian and global taxonomic references. The API retrieval yielded 4,172 rows, corresponding to 3,908 unique audited occurrence records after correction of synonym-related duplication. Records were subjected to quality-control procedures addressing geographic coordinates, coordinate uncertainty, temporal limits, basis of record, establishment status, native geographic range and duplication. Quality control retained 2,345 records, which were subsequently reduced to 1,147 spatially independent localities using a minimum 10 km thinning distance. The derived dataset preserves the GBIF occurrence identifiers and contributing dataset keys required to trace the records to their original publishers. These data were used to evaluate the exposure of Brazilian freshwater turtles to 1,154 prospective hydropower projects through Euclidean and hydrographically coherent screening, climatic model validation and integrated project prioritisation. The derived dataset represents an analytical screening dataset and should not be interpreted as a complete or current census of species distributions.