Data from: Global change on the Roof of the World: vulnerability of Himalayan otter species to land-use and climate alterations

Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment (CCVA) prescribes the
quantification of species vulnerability based on three components:
sensitivity, adaptive capacity and exposure. Such assessments should be
performed through combined approaches that integrate trait-based elements
(e.g., measures of species sensitivity such as niche width) with
correlative tools quantifying exposure (magnitude of changes in climate
within species habitat). Furthermore, as land-use alterations may increase
climate impacts on biodiversity, CCVAs should focus on both climate and
land-use change effects. Unfortunately, most of such assessments have so
far focused exclusively on exposure to climate change.  We
evaluated the vulnerability of three otter species occurring in the
Himalayan region, i.e. Aonyx cinereus, Lutra lutra and Lutrogale
perspicillata, to 2050 climate and land-use through the recently-proposed
Climate Niche Factor Analysis (CNFA) framework combined with Species
Distribution Models. Future climate and land-use change will reduce (6 –
15%) and shift (10 – 18%) the geographic range of the three species in the
Himalaya, with land-use alterations exerting far more severe effects than
climate change. Among vulnerability components, sensitivity played a
greater role than exposure in determining the vulnerability of the otters.
Specifically, the most specialist species, L. perspicillata showed the
highest vulnerability in comparison with the most generalist, L. lutra.
Our results underline how coupling climate and land-use change components
in CCVAs can generate diverging predictions of species vulnerability
compared to approaches relying on climate change only. Moreover, intrinsic
components, such as species sensitivity, proved significantly more
important in determining vulnerability than extrinsic metrics such as
habitat exposure. The dataset contains XY coordinates of Himalayan otter
species used in the study. Since Himalayan otters are listed as
threatened or vulnerable in several of the regions covered by the
study, original coordinates were rounded to 1 degree. Specific data
sources are provided in the coupled table.