Data Submission Package for publication Karmacharya et al 'Himalayan Vulture (Gyps himalayensis) associated with Diclofenac in Asia'

Abstract

This is the data package for the named study (abstract): The Himalayan vulture (Gyps himalayensis) is the largest vulture in central Asia with a wide reach across the tropical mountain parts of the Old World. While they co-evolved with humans for millennia, they are now on a decline in most parts of their range, e.g. due to contaminants in the food chain with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like Diclofenac. Summarized with a workflow, here we present the first correlational Big Data mining approach using Open Access Data for vultures and associated GIS layers in the Old World. We used latest machine learning algorithms to obtain the best possible prediction for inference. Due to the established role of Diclofenac as a local extinction factor for vultures we are correlating the best available vulture prediction with the digitally best-available global diclofenac layer. We find that vultures are fully exposed to essentially one of three levels of diclofenac: unknown, lower units and very high amounts. Many remaining vulture presences now correlate with low Diclofenac units whereas high Diclofenac shows little vultures predicted, if at all. We find most of the high risk zones to be located in China (by area), Mongolia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Bangladesh, whereas Nepal for instance seems to be rather low risk. In the absence of mechanistic studies on a larger scale we propose that our pioneering work still represents an underestimate due to several confounding actors not resolved, e.g. farming and high altitude refugia, but can be used to prioritize, pursue and fine-tune these results, inform conservation and pre-cautionary management, and use our workflow to further study, quantify and safeguard raptors and this species that exemplify such a food chain in the Anthropocene, e.g. through large diclofenac-free zones.