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Aim  To analyse the conservation status of tropical dry forests at the global scale, by combining a newly developed global distribution map with spatial data describing different threats, and to identify the relative exposure of different forest areas to such threats.

Location  Global assessment.

Methods  We present a new global distribution map of tropical dry forest derived from the recently developed MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields (VCF) product, which depicts percentage tree cover at a resolution of 500 m, combined with previously defined maps of biomes. This distribution map was overlaid with spatial data to estimate the exposure of tropical dry forests to a number of different threats: climate change, habitat fragmentation, fire, human population density and conversion to cropland. The extent of tropical dry forest currently protected was estimated by overlaying the forest map with a global data set of the …