Public reading

Shaded-relief view of the land around Río Jiménez, Guácimo, Limón Province, the parcel boundary drawn in gold32 ha inside the gold line
500 m
Shaded relief · AWS Terrain Tiles

Río Jiménez, Guácimo, Limón Province

32 ha · 10.365, -83.503 · Costa Rica

69out of 100 · Land ScoreRestore

Water first; the rest will come.

71st percentile for like land · Frontier tier · 31 conservation priority

Water
96
Soil
not read
Ecology
34
Climate
70
Pressure
93

17 of 28 sources answered · higher is better on every pillar; pressure reads calm · silent: sentinel2_ndvi, sentinel1_rtc, osm_reach…

The reading in full

This 32-hectare parcel near Río Jiménez, Guácimo, Limón Province 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: A meaningful share of this land's tree cover has been cleared since 2000. Long-term loss points to historical or ongoing clearing pressure and a lower conservation baseline; confirm the legal status and whether clearing is still active. 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: Most of the parcel reads as tree cover. Tree cover can carry real conservation and carbon value, but satellite land-cover cannot tell natural forest from a monoculture plantation (oil palm, rubber, teak). Confirm which it is before assuming biodiversity or carbon value.

The wider readings: Models project a warmer and drier climate here by 2050. Expect a warmer and drier future here; favour species and infrastructure that tolerate the projected range. Rainfall is very high. Abundant water supports productive growth but raises the risk of flooding, waterlogging, and nutrient leaching, so drainage and slope matter. 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 land is flat. Flat ground is easy to build on, farm, and mechanize, though low flat land can drain poorly and should be checked for waterlogging. 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. No satellite soil data is available for this parcel. Soil quality cannot be assessed remotely here, so a ground survey is needed before any agricultural or restoration decision. 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. Official Costa Rican record places this in Río Jiménez, Guácimo, Limón. National cadastral and administrative data ground the parcel in the legal record — the basis for title, permitting, and tax diligence.

What the land is telling us: The longer record suggests a land that has been drawn down rather than held: about 15% of its tree cover has been cleared since 2000, most recently in 2016. The cover is measurably coming back now — a land recovering, which is a workable base, but the history is the reason the foundational work comes first. 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 most of the parcel reads as tree cover.

The ground and its cover

Terrain · shaded relief — Río Jiménez, Guácimo, Limón Province
500 m
Terrain · shaded relief · AWS Terrain Tiles
Land cover · ESA WorldCover 2021 — Río Jiménez, Guácimo, Limón Province
500 m
Land cover · ESA WorldCover 2021 · ESA / Copernicus

The verdict, the five pillar readings, how much of the land was read, and the headline figures.

The verdict

69out of 100 · Land ScoreRestore

Water first; the rest will come.

Río Jiménez, Guácimo, Limón Province

71st percentile for like land · Frontier tier · 31 conservation priority

Four of five readings

Water96strong
Soilnot read
Ecology34watch
Climate70strong
Pressure93strong

Weakest: EcologyNot read: Soil

All five read on one axis: higher is better. Pressure scores calm, so a high number means little human pressure on this land. The unread pillars had their weight redistributed across the rest — reweighted, never guessed.

Standing

71stpercentile

Tropical humid · Neotropic · against 26 readings · 74th of all 100

Coverage

17 of 28 layers answered

Nearly complete — gaps reweighted, not guessed.

Silent: Sentinel-2, the radar, the infrastructure reach +8.

Where the capital goes

31/ 100 priority

Frontierhospitality fit 50

Best-fit model

Coastal buffer · blue–green

53 / 100

Fit from published rules over the indicators.

The land in numbers

Area
32ha
Elevation
12m
6–20 m
Slope
1.9°
Buildable bench
not read
Forest cover
61%
Canopy height
not read
Rainfall
3,834mm/yr
+30% over 20 yr
Warming to 2050
+1.2°C
rain -2%
Soil carbon
not read
Nearest road
not read
Species records
0records
GBIF, the global species archive

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 3,834 mm of rain falls here in a year. 61% of the parcel is under tree cover, and the ground is nearly flat (1.9° on average), so water lingers rather than runs. 2 mapped watercourses cross the land (Río Sierpe), and what leaves it travels 3 km downstream before the mapped path ends. By 2050 the models expect +1.2 °C and -2% rain, so every flow above runs a little differently than it does today.

Regeneratingcut after 2000, the cover is returning.

Protect the blue–green edge. Low-lying at 12 m, this reads as a coastal or wetland edge — an inference from elevation and water signals, not a measured shoreline distance, so confirm how near the water actually is. If it holds, the play is the buffer: protect and restore it for blue carbon (the carbon coastal wetlands lock away), storm defence, and nursery habitat. To help: stop the clearing at the streams first: every metre of canopy kept along water holds the loop together.

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

32 hectares at Río Jiménez of gentle land around 12 m. The ground reads 61% under canopy. Water shapes it — 3,834 mm of rain a year, 2 traced watercourses.

Its vocationbuffer

Protect the blue–green edge. Low-lying at 12 m, this reads as a coastal or wetland edge — an inference from elevation and water signals, not a measured shoreline distance, so confirm how near the water actually is. If it holds, the play is the buffer: protect and restore it for blue carbon (the carbon coastal wetlands lock away), storm defence, and nursery habitat.

12 m elevation61% forest1.9° slope3,834 mm rain/yrFrontier tier — outside the mapped network
Its trajectoryrecoveringcut after 2000, the cover is returning.

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.

Sources & method · 17 layers
Water, roads & protected areas — OpenStreetMap

Overpass (waterways, highways, places, protected areas)

vector · live
ODbL 1.0
Biodiversity — GBIF

Occurrence records (count + top species)

point · live
Mixed CC0 / CC-BY / CC-BY-NC (per dataset)
Heritage presence — public record

Recorded historic/heritage features within 10 km — generalized to counts, classes and distance bands; never coordinates

landscape (10 km) · live
ODbL 1.0
Place memory — Wikipedia

Named places and features of the surrounding landscape (titles + distances)

article · live
CC BY-SA 4.0 (titles/facts)
Costa Rica territorial record — SNIT

Administrative units, cadastral parcels, agrological land-capability, protected areas, Holdridge life zones (WFS)

vector (1:5 000 base) · national SDI (rolling)
SNIT Condiciones Generales de Uso (attribution)
Ecological corridors — PNCB / SINAC (Costa Rica)

Declared biological corridors (bundled screening reference of official corridors; approximate extents — confirm against SINAC/PNCB)

screening extent · PNCB (rolling)
Public programme (SINAC); reference compiled for screening
Regional illness — dengue burden (Costa Rica)

Dengue notifications by cantón 2013–2018 (suspected + probable + confirmed) + national series to 2024; bundled OpenDengue V1.3 extract — historical burden geography, not the current season

cantón · 2013–2018 (cantón) / 2024 (national)
CC-BY 4.0 (OpenDengue)
Place — OpenStreetMap / Nominatim

Nominatim reverse geocode

settlement · live
ODbL 1.0
Terrain — AWS Terrarium (Mapzen)

Terrarium elevation tiles

~10 m (z12) · 2017
Open (attribution)
Climate — Open-Meteo

Archive 2004–2024 + MPI-ESM1-2-XR to 2050

~9 km · 2004–2024 / 2045–2049
CC-BY 4.0 (data); non-commercial API tier
Land cover — ESA WorldCover

WorldCover 2021 v200

10 m · 2021
CC-BY 4.0 (commercial promotion: notify due@esa.int)
Surface water — JRC Global Surface Water

Global Surface Water v1.4 — occurrence & seasonality

30 m · 1984–2021
Copernicus / open (attribution)
Forest loss — Hansen Global Forest Change

Global Forest Change (tree cover 2000 + annual loss)

~30 m · 2000–2023
CC-BY 4.0
Watershed — Global Watersheds (MERIT-Hydro)

Upstream basin + downstream flowpath (screening hydrography)

~90 m · MERIT-Hydro 2019
Open service, no warranty; engine open source (delineator)
Seismicity — USGS earthquake catalog

M ≥ 5 events within 100 km, past 50 years

event · live catalog
US public domain (cite USGS)
Governance — public map record + Wikidata

Administrative hierarchy + structured facts of the governing unit

admin unit · live / Atlas data year 2022
ODbL 1.0 / CC0 / PNUD-UCR publication (attribution)
Indigenous territories — official record (Costa Rica)

Official decree-delimited territory boundaries (legal-constraint overlay; never scored or ranked)

official boundary · decree delimitations (rolling)
SNIT/FONAFIFO public services (attribution); decree facts public law

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: Sentinel-2, the radar, the infrastructure reach, osm adaptation, the soil survey, the governance record, the thermal read, the underground atlas, the population grid, the hazard screen, modis fire history — the affected pillars were reweighted, not guessed.

Generated Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:26:31 GMT · 19.1s · synthesized by TERRA.