Land Intelligence Report
Sotaquirá, Centro, Boyacá
82 ha · 5.7929, -73.2311 · Good bones. The rest is work.
The reading in full
This 82-hectare parcel near Sotaquirá, Centro, Boyacá is land with sound foundations and clear regenerative upside. It scores 69 out of 100 on the Dear Wise Earth Land Score.
The risks that most shape a decision here: The terrain is steep, which constrains construction and raises erosion risk. Steep slopes increase building and road costs, limit machinery access, and make the land more prone to erosion and landslides. This area is highly exposed to projected climate change by 2050. Large shifts in temperature and rainfall can change what the land can support, so any plan should be built around the projected conditions, not current ones. This ground has a recorded seismic history. Repeated strong earthquakes within reach shape how anything here should be built — seismic design codes, slope stability under shaking, and insurance all follow from it.
Where the upside lies: The soil is rich in organic carbon, a strong base for farming and restoration. Carbon-rich soil holds water and nutrients well, supports higher yields and faster regrowth, and may qualify for soil-carbon programs.
The wider readings: Rainfall is moderate. Water is adequate for many uses, but storage through the dry season improves reliability. This parcel is a position in a watershed, not an island. What arrives here is decided upstream, and what happens here is felt downstream — land use on this parcel is water stewardship for everyone below it. Read the upstream land uses before trusting the water, and count the downstream neighbours before changing it. The largest buildable bench is 4.08 ha. This is the piece that decides what fits: a single footprint, its access, and its services all have to land on contiguous ground. Everything beyond it is a second site, not an extension of the first. Little wildlife has been formally recorded here. A low record count usually reflects limited survey effort rather than low biodiversity, so a ground survey is needed before drawing conclusions. The human fabric around this land is measured, not assumed. Labour, emergencies, schooling, and electricity all run on these distances — they decide what daily life and operations here actually cost. Jurisdiction is part of the parcel. Permits, zoning, water, and roads run through these offices — knowing who governs the land is the first step of every plan that touches it.
What the land is telling us: Read across the record, the land reads as stable: the canopy history shows no meaningful loss in a generation and the water signal is holding, which means the work is to build on a sound base rather than to reverse a decline. Of the land's core processes, the water cycle reads as adequate to abundant, so the question is less supply than how well the land captures and holds what falls and community dynamics are barely recorded here — an absence of data, not necessarily of life. What orbit cannot see is what happens below the surface — soil biology, structure, and the carbon held in the ground — so treat those as the first things to confirm underfoot. Taken together, this is land with sound foundations and clear regenerative upside. Its clearest strength to build from is that the soil is rich in organic carbon, a strong base for farming and restoration.
The verdict
Good bones. The rest is work.
Sotaquirá, Centro, Boyacá
Frontier tier · 21 conservation priority
Five readings
Weakest: Ecology
All five read on one axis: higher is better. Pressure scores calm, so a high number means little human pressure on this land.
Standing
Not yet ranked — the wall is still too small for a fair cohort. It sharpens as readings land.
Coverage
16 of 27 layers answered
Every pillar read from live data.
Silent: the river and road trace, Sentinel-2, the radar +8.
Where the capital goes
Frontierhospitality fit 51
Best-fit model
Upper-watershed research station
Fit from published rules over the indicators.
The land in numbers
Headline figures. The Why tab carries each reading in full, with its source and its date. “Not read” means the source had nothing for this parcel: a gap is named, never filled with a guess.
How this land works
About 1,132 mm of rain falls here in a year. 44% of the parcel is under tree cover, and the ground slopes 10.8° on average, enough to move water without tearing soil where roots hold it. By 2050 the models expect +1.6 °C and -20% rain, so every flow above runs a little differently than it does today.
Holding — the canopy record shows no meaningful loss in a generation.
Guard the headwaters; study what they hold. At 2,836 m with 44% tree cover, this reads as intact montane headwater forest — high-value habitat whose biodiversity and water function justify guarding it and studying what it holds. To help: plant along the watercourses and the ridge: canopy there returns the most water to the rest.
The score is the footnote. What matters is the pattern above it: what arrives, what the ground does with it, what leaves, and which way that is moving.
This place
82 hectares at Sotaquirá of strongly rising land around 2,836 m. The ground reads 44% under canopy. Water shapes it — 1,132 mm of rain a year. 1,916 people within 5 km, governed from Sotaquirá.
Guard the headwaters; study what they hold. At 2,836 m with 44% tree cover, this reads as intact montane headwater forest — high-value habitat whose biodiversity and water function justify guarding it and studying what it holds.
This is an outsider's reading, assembled from instruments and public records. It is where understanding begins, not where it ends — the land, its neighbours, and the people who know it hold the rest.
The parcel from orbit
Finding the latest clear satellite pass…
The satellite signature · since 2017
The ground has kept its character between 2017 and 2025.
Each year of satellite record is folded into one signature per 10 m of ground. Where the signature turned, the ground became a different kind of place — cleared, planted, built, burned, flooded or grown back. It says that it changed, never into what.
- Changed
- 0%
- Held, on average
- 0.98
Similarity of each cell, 2017 → 2025; the gold line is the parcel. 8,183 pixels at 10 m, cells of 24 m. AlphaEarth Foundations Satellite Embedding (Google / Google DeepMind).
Reads all 9 annual layers the first time, then keeps them.
Land like this
Other ground that reads like this parcel — on the wall, and around it.
On the wall
Comparing with the readings on the wall…
Across the landscape
Compares every 160 m of the 2025 layer around the parcel with its signature. Read once, then kept.
Reading the land's record…
The water’s position
What arrives here is decided upstream; what happens here is felt downstream. The map in the Land tab can draw both.
Screening hydrography, never a legal drainage determination.
The people around it
Who governs this land
Colombia · Boyacá · Sotaquirá
What the land is exposed to — and what stands against it
12 earthquakes of magnitude 5 or more within 100 km in 50 years, strongest M6.5 — most recent M5.3, 2005 (USGS).
What the record remembers
The named places and features the public encyclopedia holds around this land: the recorded memory, not the whole memory.
- Sotaquirá3.6 km
- Cómbita5.2 km
- Alto Chicamocha5.7 km
Relationships
A parcel is a node in living systems, not an island. Each line below is derived from this reading itself.
Each line is tagged with how it is known: estimated, from a model, not a measurement · official, from a public or state record.
- estimated
This parcel collects the water of its watershed— screening hydrography (MERIT-Hydro ~90 m)
- estimated
This parcel sends its water down Downstream flowpath0.7 km mapped below the parcel— screening hydrography (MERIT-Hydro ~90 m)
- official
This parcel answers to Sotaquirá
- official
Sotaquirá sits in Boyacá
- official
Boyacá sits in Colombia
- official
This parcel stands on ground that has felt Seismic history12 quakes ≥ M5 within 100 km in 50 yr
Where it sits
A living system does not stop at the fence. The parcel is a node in each of these, and it plays a different part at each scale.
- 1
parcel
82 ha inside the boundary
forest and open ground, mixed
44% tree cover
- 2
catchment
its catchment
a sink: a large country drains through it
1 km of mapped path below
The threads
Where the readings connect. Each thread follows one chain of cause and consequence across the instruments, and ends in what it means for what you do.
Each line is tagged with how it is known: recorded, from the historical archive · observed, measured from satellite or map data · estimated, from a model, not a measurement · derived, reasoned from other readings on this page · scientific, from a published study.
The forest here has held for a generation.
- recordedThis canopy has held: 27% cover in 2000, 0.4% lost since, none of it recent.
What to doThe work here is keeping, not fixing — and the first walk should confirm the stand is as intact up close as it reads from orbit.
Bears on the land's living value · high confidence
More water is arriving — and arriving harder.
- observedThe twenty-year rain record moved +76.6% — this is a place whose water is changing, not holding.
- observedOn 10.8° average slope, pulsed rain becomes runoff energy — erosion and flash flow, not just supply.
- estimatedThat energy leaves along a mapped 0.7 km downstream path — what this parcel's cover holds back, the people below never have to absorb.
- derivedNote the disagreement: the observed archive moved +76.6%, while the 2050 model says -20%. Neither cancels the other — the archive is what happened, the model is one projection. Design for the envelope: drainage for the wet record, storage for the dry projection.
What to doKeep or restore cover on the slopes and size drainage for pulses, not averages; verify culverts and crossings in the wet season.
Bears on this land and the people downstream · medium confidence
Strong land, standing on its own.
- derivedThe Land Score reads 69 against a conservation priority of 21.
- derivedIts value is intrinsic rather than positional — the network does not depend on it, which frees what it can be.
What to doPlans here answer to the land itself, not to a network obligation.
Bears on what a plan owes the landscape · medium confidence
Height is this land's climate insurance.
- observedAt 2,836 m, today's mean sits at 11.9°C.
- estimatedThe +1.6°C projected by 2050 arrives on that cool baseline — roughly 0 hot days a year here while lowland sites cross heat thresholds this parcel never reaches.
- derivedAs the lowlands warm, land that stays temperate does double work: livable for people, refuge for species moving uphill.
What to doTreat elevation as an appreciating part of the asset — and design for the species arriving from below, not only the ones here now.
Bears on the decades ahead · medium confidence
This land comes with neighbours.
- scientific1,916 people live within 5 km — this land sits inside a living community.
- derivedThe neighbours are the labor pool, the early-warning system, and the social license — the project's first relationships are already living here.
What to doMeet the neighbours before the notary — what they know and want will shape everything here.
Bears on daily life and operating cost · medium confidence
The loops that govern it
Regeneration is not a feature added to land; it is a loop changing direction. These are the ones the readings can see, which way each is running, and where a hand changes it.
Forest and water
canopy → cloud and rain held → streams and soil moisture → canopy
running toward regeneration
44% tree cover on 1,132 mm of rain; 0.4% of the tree cover lost since 2000, last in 2014.
Plant along the watercourses and the ridge: canopy there returns the most water to the rest.
Open ground and soil
bare or grazed ground → compaction → runoff → thinner soil
holding
56% open ground on a 10.8° average slope, 0% cropped.
Keep the ground covered through the dry season; rested pasture and cover crops turn this loop around on gentle slopes.
Reading the place
This 82-hectare parcel near Sotaquirá, Centro, Boyacá is land with sound foundations and clear regenerative upside, scoring 69 out of 100. The reading that most shapes the work here is that the terrain is steep, which constrains construction and raises erosion risk. Its main strength is that the soil is rich in organic carbon, a strong base for farming and restoration. The first move: design roads and structures to the contour, and get a geotechnical and erosion assessment before any earthworks.
The terrain is steep, which constrains construction and raises erosion risk.
Steep slopes increase building and road costs, limit machinery access, and make the land more prone to erosion and landslides.
Mean slope 11°, with 291 m of elevation change across the parcel.
This area is highly exposed to projected climate change by 2050.
Large shifts in temperature and rainfall can change what the land can support, so any plan should be built around the projected conditions, not current ones.
Projected change by 2050: +1.6 °C mean temperature, -20% rainfall. Exposure rated High.
This ground has a recorded seismic history.
Repeated strong earthquakes within reach shape how anything here should be built — seismic design codes, slope stability under shaking, and insurance all follow from it.
12 earthquakes ≥ M5 within 100 km in 50 years, strongest M6.5, most recent M5.3 in 2005 (USGS catalog).
The soil is rich in organic carbon, a strong base for farming and restoration.
Carbon-rich soil holds water and nutrients well, supports higher yields and faster regrowth, and may qualify for soil-carbon programs.
53.8 g/kg soil organic carbon in the top 30 cm, clay loam texture, pH 5.5 (ISRIC SoilGrids).
Rainfall is moderate.
Water is adequate for many uses, but storage through the dry season improves reliability.
1,132 mm of rain per year. The archive's 20-year trend reads about +77% — a swing that size deserves verification against local records before it informs any plan.
This parcel is a position in a watershed, not an island.
What arrives here is decided upstream, and what happens here is felt downstream — land use on this parcel is water stewardship for everyone below it. Read the upstream land uses before trusting the water, and count the downstream neighbours before changing it.
its own water runs 0.7 km downstream of it (MERIT-Hydro screening hydrography).
The largest buildable bench is 4.08 ha.
This is the piece that decides what fits: a single footprint, its access, and its services all have to land on contiguous ground. Everything beyond it is a second site, not an extension of the first.
12% of the parcel lies at or under 10°; largest contiguous piece 4.08 ha at about 2,780 m; the ground faces south-east; read on ~10 m cells from the Terrarium DEM.
Little wildlife has been formally recorded here.
A low record count usually reflects limited survey effort rather than low biodiversity, so a ground survey is needed before drawing conclusions.
Only 0 biodiversity records nearby (GBIF, the global species-record archive).
The human fabric around this land is measured, not assumed.
Labour, emergencies, schooling, and electricity all run on these distances — they decide what daily life and operations here actually cost.
1,916 people live within 5 km (WorldPop 2020).
Jurisdiction is part of the parcel.
Permits, zoning, water, and roads run through these offices — knowing who governs the land is the first step of every plan that touches it.
Colombia · Boyacá · Sotaquirá.
Confidence reflects the data behind each reading: high when clear passes or strong sources agree, medium on a partial or single-source signal, low where the data is sparse or indirect. A low-confidence reading usually needs one more clear pass, or a check on the ground.
What the land is telling us
Read across the record, the land reads as stable: the canopy history shows no meaningful loss in a generation and the water signal is holding, which means the work is to build on a sound base rather than to reverse a decline.
Of the land's core processes, the water cycle reads as adequate to abundant, so the question is less supply than how well the land captures and holds what falls and community dynamics are barely recorded here — an absence of data, not necessarily of life. What orbit cannot see is what happens below the surface — soil biology, structure, and the carbon held in the ground — so treat those as the first things to confirm underfoot.
Taken together, this is land with sound foundations and clear regenerative upside. Its clearest strength to build from is that the soil is rich in organic carbon, a strong base for farming and restoration.
Where the capital goes · corridor & deployment
Standalone conservation value, outside the mapped network.
standalone value, outside the mapped network
Two lenses, two numbers: the Land Score reads this land's own body; conservation priority reads its position in the network. When they disagree, the gap itself is the finding.
This reads as a partial patch that extends the network's reach, scoring 21 out of 100 for conservation priority. It carries standalone value outside the mapped network — worth holding on its own terms. A small, low-footprint operation (fit 51/100) could fund the work from the already-worked ground.
The funding layer: a small, low-footprint operation sited on the already-worked ground, sized to carry the restoration — never spending the habitat it depends on.
This reads as a partial patch — enhancing it extends the network's reach.
A partly-forested parcel works as a stepping stone between the standing habitat around it: thickening its cover and connecting it to the neighbours widens the habitat that species can actually move through. No declared corridor is mapped here — the network in question is the nearby forest itself.
44% tree cover.
A modest hospitality layer is possible, but it is not the strongest card.
In the regenerative model the lodging is a means, not the end: a low-footprint operation sited on the already-worked ground earns the revenue that funds the restoration and stewardship, while the core is left to recover. Kept small, it also gives the corridor local guardians with a reason to hold it.
Hospitality fit 51/100, drawing on standing forest, relief for views. Site any building on the already-worked ground, not the habitat.
Capital moves
- 01
Tie up the land before restoring it — purchase or an easement that holds through a sale.
Before committingRestoration is a multi-year investment; without secure tenure the connectivity it builds can be undone by the next owner.
Confirm on the ground · Trace the title and cadastral record, and check what conservation-finance the jurisdiction offers before committing.
- 02
Thicken cover along the parcel's edges and watercourses to widen what species can move through.
First yearAs a stepping stone or buffer, the parcel's contribution is its edges and riparian strips — the parts that link to the habitat next door.
Confirm on the ground · With an ecologist, identify the connecting strips worth planting first; confirm which watercourses cross the land at the end of the dry season.
- 03
Site a small, low-footprint hospitality operation on the already-worked ground to fund the stewardship.
Once the land is securedA modest operation on the already-worked ground earns the revenue that pays for the restoration and the guardians, without spending the habitat it depends on.
Confirm on the ground · Model the operation at a size the land can carry, keep it off the habitat, and confirm the zoning and any sustainable-tourism certification locally.
- 04
Set a wildlife baseline and re-read it — camera traps on the parcel's connecting edges.
OngoingFunders and partners judge conservation land by whether wildlife actually uses it; a repeatable baseline is what turns the thesis into evidence and steers the next round of capital.
Confirm on the ground · Run camera traps and species counts on a fixed schedule and track movement between the parcel and the habitat beside it.
The deployment reading is a screening lens layered on the Land Score — it points capital at the land where it builds the most connectivity, and each move is paired with the ground-truth step that confirms it.
The physical frame
Climate, water, soil, and shape — what the land is made of and what moves across it.
Climate · to 2050
Annual rainfall, 2004–2024 · mm
Exposure · High
2050 sits within a single planning horizon — about 24 years out. The models expect seasons here about 1.6°C warmer than today's, with 20% less rain. Expect is the honest verb: this is the middle of a range of futures, not a certainty — so design to the range, not to today.
Water
Soil · 0–30 cm
Clay loam
Terrain & cover
Siting
Measured on ~10.0 m cells across 8,226 points of elevation. Screening geometry from open terrain data — confirm on the ground before siting anything.
The living surface
What grows here, what is being lost, and what presses on it.
Ecology
Pressure
Source unavailable for this parcel.
Deforestation
INPE DETER (Amazônia)
Forest history · since 2000
Hansen Global Forest Change GFC-2023-v1.11
Future · the horizons the engine has read
Now
- Mean temperature
- 11.9 °C
- Rain, latest year (2024)
- 1,563 mm
- Hot days (≥32 °C) / yr
- 0
- Longest dry spell
- 20 days
- Mean elevation
- 2,836 m
The rain row is one year alone — the Water panel's 1,132 mm is the long mean, and with the record up 77% in twenty years, recent years sit above it by design.
2050
- Temperature shift
- +1.6 °C+1.6 to +1.7 °C across 4 models
- Rainfall shift
- -20 %-20 to -7 % across 4 models
- Hot days (≥32 °C) / yr
- 0
- Longest dry spell
- 10 days (-10)
- Exposure
- High — a hard projected shift — plan around it
- Resilience reading
- 47 / 100
The resilience reading is the climate pillar from the five dials above — one number, shown here beside the horizon it scores.
The headline projection is one model family (CMIP6 · MPI-ESM1-2-XR via Open-Meteo); the range beside it spans 4 CMIP6 HighResMIP models. All of them run one emissions scenario (SSP5-8.5) — several models, not several futures. The 2045–2049 window stands in for 2050, and expect is the honest word. Intermediate horizons (2030 · 2040) and 2100 are not shown because the engine has not read them — TERRA does not interpolate between measurements.
Best-fit regenerative model
Upper-watershed research station
43 / 100 fitGuard the headwaters; study what they hold.
At 2,836 m with 44% tree cover, this reads as intact montane headwater forest — high-value habitat whose biodiversity and water function justify guarding it and studying what it holds.
Intact montane forest at the top of a watershed, rich enough to justify a small research-and-education presence that funds protection of the water tower below.
Also consider · Watershed protection (24)
A published, rules-based suggestion read from the parcel's own indicators — forest, water, slope, access, and its place in the network. It names the shape of project the land is already set up to carry; confirm it against tenure, soils, and what you know from the ground. These fit numbers rank whole project models against each other; the deployment lens's hospitality fit (51/100) is a different scale that asks only whether a small lodge could fund the stewardship here — the two need not match.
What to do
- 01
Design roads and structures to the contour, and get a geotechnical and erosion assessment before any earthworks.
Before committingSteep ground raises building and access costs and erosion risk; the terrain sets the layout, not the other way round.
Confirm on the ground · Have a geotechnical engineer assess slope stability and cut-and-fill on the ground before a road line is committed.
- 02
Design to the 2050 climate projections rather than today's conditions.
First yearThe land is strongly exposed to projected change, so species, water storage, and infrastructure should be chosen for the conditions ahead.
Confirm on the ground · Cross-check the projections against the memory of long-time residents on how the seasons have already shifted here.
- 03
Carry out a field biodiversity survey to see what the records miss.
First yearA thin record here usually reflects little survey effort, not little life; what actually lives on the parcel shapes both its value and its constraints.
Confirm on the ground · Have an ecologist survey across seasons; local naturalists and birders often already know the site.
- 04
Walk the land to scope the regenerative work before committing capital.
First visitThe foundations are present and the upside is real, but sequencing the work well is what realises it.
Confirm on the ground · Read the water, soil, and cover on the ground, then plan the work from the most permanent layer down.
Questions to sit with
- The soil is a real asset here — what use would build it further rather than spend it down?
- If the seasons here shift as the models expect, which of your intentions for the land still hold — and which need rethinking now?
- Are you here to hold this land as it is, to work it, or to help it change — and does the reading above serve that intention?
- If the work succeeds, what do the water, the canopy, and the people around this land look like a generation from now — and what is the first condition that has to change for that to begin?
- Where does this reading disagree with what you have seen walking the land? That disagreement is the first thing to check on the ground.
These are not data gaps — they are the questions the data cannot answer.
Ask the analyst
Answers are grounded in this parcel's reading and tagged by basis — observed is measured, derived is reasoned from measurements, estimated is model-based, and unknown is said plainly. The conversation stays in your browser.
Sources & method · 16 layers→
Occurrence records (count + top species)
Named places and features of the surrounding landscape (titles + distances)
DETER-Amazônia change polygons
Nominatim reverse geocode
Terrarium elevation tiles
Archive 2004–2024 + MPI-ESM1-2-XR to 2050
SoilGrids v2.0 (SOC, pH, sand, clay; 0–30 cm)
WorldCover 2021 v200
Global Surface Water v1.4 — occurrence & seasonality
Global Forest Change (tree cover 2000 + annual loss)
Per-cell slope and aspect (Horn), buildable share, largest contiguous bench
Upstream basin + downstream flowpath (screening hydrography)
Gridded population 2020 (parcel + 5 km ring sums)
M ≥ 5 events within 100 km, past 50 years
Satellite Embedding v1, annual (64-dimensional per-pixel embedding) — baseline and latest year compared
Administrative hierarchy + structured facts of the governing unit
Every number above is public, open data — named, dated, and licensed. What TERRA does not publish is the lens: the weights, curves, and verdict thresholds that turn these layers into a Land Score. That judgment is calibrated from land walked on the ground, and it stays proprietary.
Unavailable for this parcel: the river and road trace, Sentinel-2, the radar, the infrastructure reach, osm adaptation, the heritage record, the governance record, the thermal read, the biomass map, the hazard screen, modis fire history — the affected pillars were reweighted, not guessed.
Generated Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:04:31 GMT · 19.1s · synthesized by TERRA.
Generated Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:04:31 GMT · synthesized by TERRA · Dear Wise Earth.