Land Intelligence Report

Río Jiménez, Guácimo, Limón Province

32 ha · 10.3652, -83.5033 · Water first; the rest will come.

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 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 verdict

69out of 100 · Land ScoreRestore

Water first; the rest will come.

Río Jiménez, Guácimo, Limón Province

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

Not yet ranked — the wall is still too small for a fair cohort. It sharpens as readings land.

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.

The parcel from orbit

Finding the latest clear satellite pass…

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.

Drains to this point
not read
Mapped path below
3 km
Source
MERIT-Hydro
a global hydrography grid, ~90 m

Screening hydrography, never a legal drainage determination.

Who governs this land

Costa Rica · Guácimo

Population
8,742
of the local governing unit
Area
333.7 km²
of the local governing unit

What the land is exposed to — and what stands against it

28 earthquakes of magnitude 5 or more within 100 km in 50 years, strongest M7.6 — most recent M5, 2026 (USGS).

What the record remembers

The named places and features the public encyclopedia holds around this land: the recorded memory, not the whole memory.

  • Tortuguero Conservation Area3.9 km
  • Parque nacional Tortuguero6.5 km
  • Río Jiménez (Costa Rica)6.8 km

No heritage features recorded within 10 km of this parcel.

Locations are deliberately withheld; presence is shown at landscape scale only. Costa Rica: archaeological finds are state property (Ley 6703); the Museo Nacional keeps the site registry and development projects carry a SETENA assessment duty. Absence of information here is not evidence of absence.

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 · observed, measured from satellite or map data · official, from a public or state record.

  • estimated

    This parcel collects the water of Its watershedscreening hydrography (MERIT-Hydro ~90 m)

  • estimated

    This parcel sends its water down Downstream flowpath3 km mapped below the parcelscreening hydrography (MERIT-Hydro ~90 m)

  • observed

    This parcel is within reach of Río Sierpenearest mapped water 1.15 km

  • official

    This parcel sits beside Corredor Biológico Volcánica Central–Talamanca22.8 km awayPNCB screening extent — confirm against SINAC

  • official

    Corredor Biológico Volcánica Central–Talamanca is designed to connect Parque Nacional Braulio CarrilloPNCB screening extent — confirm against SINAC

  • official

    Corredor Biológico Volcánica Central–Talamanca is designed to connect Volcán Irazú / TurrialbaPNCB screening extent — confirm against SINAC

  • official

    This parcel answers to Costa Rica8,742 people

  • official

    This parcel stands on ground that has felt Seismic history28 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. 1

    parcel

    32 ha inside the boundary

    a standing block of forest

    61% tree cover

  2. 2

    catchment

    its catchment

    a sink: a large country drains through it

    3 km of mapped path below

  3. 3

    corridor

    Corredor Biológico Volcánica Central–Talamanca

    core of the corridor

    22.8 km to the corridor

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 · derived, reasoned from other readings on this page · observed, measured from satellite or map data · estimated, from a model, not a measurement.

This is a forest coming back, not one that never left.

  1. recordedCut and coming back: 14.9% went after 2000 (last in 2016), and the cover now reads 61% — the land is regrowing, which means young forest, not old.

What to doProtect the regrowth's momentum: young forest gains value fastest when simply left connected and unburned.

Bears on the land's living value · high confidence

The calm here is partly unmeasured.

  1. derivedThe pressure reading is near-perfect, but 3 of its instruments did not answer (roads, settlements, or fire).
  2. derivedQuiet data is not proven quiet land — near a town, an unread road is more often a data gap than true remoteness.

What to doVerify access and neighbours on the ground before banking the calm.

Bears on how much to trust the calm · medium confidence

Independent signals converge: water will struggle to leave this land.

  1. observedThe ground is low and nearly level (12 m, 1.9° slope) — water that arrives has nowhere to drain to.
  2. observedAnd the rain record has risen 30% in twenty years.
  3. derived2 separate signals point the same way — this is not one sensor's opinion.

What to doSite anything permanent off the wet ground, and walk the parcel in the rainy season before believing any dry-season visit.

Bears on where anything gets built · medium confidence

More water is arriving — and arriving harder.

  1. observedThe twenty-year rain record moved +30% — this is a place whose water is changing, not holding.
  2. estimatedThe dry spells are lengthening at the same time (~8 → ~15 days) — more rain is arriving in stronger pulses with longer gaps, not as a gentler year.
  3. estimatedThat energy leaves along a mapped 3 km downstream path — what this parcel's cover holds back, the people below never have to absorb.

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.

  1. derivedThe Land Score reads 69 against a conservation priority of 31.
  2. 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

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 degradation

61% tree cover on 3,834 mm of rain; 14.9% of the tree cover lost since 2000, last in 2016.

Stop the clearing at the streams first: every metre of canopy kept along water holds the loop together.

Open ground and soil

bare or grazed ground → compaction → runoff → thinner soil

holding

39% open ground on a 1.9° average slope.

Keep the ground covered through the dry season; rested pasture and cover crops turn this loop around on gentle slopes.

Reading the place

This 32-hectare parcel near Río Jiménez, Guácimo, Limón Province is land with sound foundations and clear regenerative upside, scoring 69 out of 100. The reading that most shapes the work here is that a meaningful share of this land's tree cover has been cleared since 2000. Its main strength is that most of the parcel reads as tree cover. The first move: ground-truth what the canopy actually is before assuming forest value.

Riskhigh confidence

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.

About 14.9% of the parcel lost tree cover since 2000, most recently in 2016. It held 64% tree cover in 2000. Source: Hansen Global Forest Change GFC-2023-v1.11.

Riskhigh confidence

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.

28 earthquakes ≥ M5 within 100 km in 50 years, strongest M7.6, most recent M5 in 2026 (USGS catalog).

Opportunitylow confidence

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.

61% of the parcel reads as tree cover (satellite land-cover mapping). Naturalness is not verified.

Climatemedium confidence

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.

Projected change by 2050: +1.2 °C mean temperature, -2% rainfall. Exposure rated Moderate.

Waterhigh confidence

Rainfall is very high.

Abundant water supports productive growth but raises the risk of flooding, waterlogging, and nutrient leaching, so drainage and slope matter.

3,834 mm of rain per year. Nearest mapped watercourse is about 1.15 km away. The archive's 20-year trend reads about +30% — a swing that size deserves verification against local records before it informs any plan.

Watermedium confidence

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 3 km downstream of it (MERIT-Hydro screening hydrography).

Terrainhigh confidence

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.

Mean elevation 12 m, mean slope 2°, 14 m of relief.

Biodiversitylow confidence

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).

Soillow confidence

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.

The SoilGrids survey returned no data for this location.

Accesslow confidence

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.

Costa Rica · Guácimo — 8,742 people in the governing unit.

Accessmedium confidence

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.

Jurisdiction: Río Jiménez, Guácimo, Limón. Source: SNIT.

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

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.

Where the capital goes · corridor & deployment

31Conservation priority
FrontierCore habitat

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.

Nearest declared corridor: Corredor Biológico Volcánica Central–Talamanca, about 23 km · Área de Conservación Central / La Amistad-Pacífico (ACC / ACLAP)

This reads as intact habitat to secure, scoring 31 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 50/100) could fund the work from the already-worked ground.

50/100
Hospitality fit

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.

Corridorlow confidence

The nearest declared corridor is the Corredor Biológico Volcánica Central–Talamanca, about 23 km away (screening).

The parcel reads as outside the mapped network, so its connectivity value comes from what it holds and what protected land sits beside it rather than a corridor mandate. That corridor links Parque Nacional Braulio Carrillo, Volcán Irazú / Turrialba, Parque Internacional La Amistad.

Nearest PNCB screening extent ~23 km. Extents are approximate — confirm against SINAC/PNCB.

Conservationmedium confidence

This reads as intact habitat — the priority is to secure it, not rebuild it.

Standing natural forest is far cheaper to protect than to restore, and holding it inside a corridor keeps the connection open. Securing tenure and legal protection is where capital does the most here.

61% tree cover, 15% cleared since 2000.

Hospitalitylow confidence

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 50/100, drawing on standing forest. Site any building on the already-worked ground, not the habitat.

Capital moves

  1. 01

    Secure this land first — through purchase, or a conservation easement that survives a change of owner.

    Before committing

    Intact corridor habitat holds its value only while it stays intact; locking in protection before the land turns over is the move capital cannot undo.

    Confirm on the ground · Confirm title and boundaries with a local lawyer, then scope a servidumbre ecológica (ecological easement) and FONAFIFO's PSA forest-protection payment (Pago por Servicios Ambientales — Costa Rica's national payment for keeping forest standing) against the parcel.

  2. 02

    Protect the standing forest and remove the active threats to it.

    First visit

    The habitat is already here; the work is to keep it — stopping clearing, fire, and hunting pressure holds far more value than any planting would add.

    Confirm on the ground · Walk the boundary for signs of encroachment, fire, and hunting; agree the protection terms with neighbours who share the edge.

  3. 03

    Site a small, low-footprint hospitality operation on the already-worked ground to fund the stewardship.

    Once the land is secured

    A 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 check the Certificado de Sostenibilidad Turística (CST) and local zoning before designing anything.

  4. 04

    Set a connectivity baseline and re-read it — camera traps aimed at the movement the corridor was declared to carry.

    Ongoing

    Funders and partners judge a corridor by whether wildlife actually moves through 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, aimed at the connectivity this corridor was declared for — one of the country's oldest corridors, bridging the Central Volcanic Cordillera to the Talamanca massif.

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. Corridor extents are approximate PNCB screening footprints; confirm a parcel against the official SINAC/PNCB record.

The physical frame

Climate, water, soil, and shape — what the land is made of and what moves across it.

Climate · to 2050

Annual rainfall, 20042024 · mm

24.8°C
Mean temp
+1.2°C
2050 Δ temp
-2%
2050 Δ rain

Exposure · Moderate

2050 sits within a single planning horizon — about 24 years out. The models expect seasons here about 1.2°C warmer than today's, with 2% 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

3,834mm/yr
Rainfall
+30.0%
20-yr trend
1.2km
To watercourse

Río Sierpe

Soil · 0–30 cm

Source unavailable for this parcel.

Terrain & cover

12m
Elevation
1.9°
Mean slope
61%
Forest
0%
Built
Tree cover 61%Grassland 38%Wetland 1%

The living surface

What grows here, what is being lost, and what presses on it.

Ecology

0
Recorded wildlife observations
GBIF · the global species-record archive

Pressure

km
To road
km
To settlement

Forest history · since 2000

64%
Tree cover 2000
14.9%
Cover lost
2016
Latest loss

Hansen Global Forest Change GFC-2023-v1.11

Record & context

What the state and its institutions say about this ground.

Costa Rica ecological corridor

Nearby
Corridor
~23 km away
Área de Conservación Central / La Amistad-Pacífico (ACC / ACLAP)
Conservation area

Corredor Biológico Volcánica Central–Talamanca

One of the country's oldest corridors, bridging the Central Volcanic Cordillera to the Talamanca massif.

Connects · Parque Nacional Braulio Carrillo · Volcán Irazú / Turrialba · Parque Internacional La Amistad

PNCB / SINAC — Corredores Biológicos (screening reference) · approximate screening extent — confirm against the official SINAC / PNCB record

See the corridor network →

Costa Rica land record

Río Jiménez, Guácimo, Limón
Jurisdiction

SNIT Costa Rica (IGN / IDECORI) · official national data — verify title & permits locally

Regional illness · dengue

High
Recorded burden
rank 15 of 72 cantons
4,638
Notifications 2013–2018
~773/yr
2,662
Worst year
2013

Guácimo district · nationally, Costa Rica recorded 31,259 dengue notifications in 2024.

OpenDengue (PAHO / Ministerio de Salud record) · notification counts (suspected + probable + confirmed (non-severe & severe)), not population-adjusted — historical burden geography, not the current season. Ground-truth with the Ministerio de Salud's weekly bulletin.

Future · the horizons the engine has read

Now

Mean temperature
24.8 °C
Rain, latest year (2024)
4,970 mm
Hot days (≥32 °C) / yr
2
Longest dry spell
8 days
Mean elevation
12 m

The rain row is one year alone — the Water panel's 3,834 mm is the long mean, and with the record up 30% in twenty years, recent years sit above it by design.

2050

Temperature shift
+1.2 °C+1.2 to +1.4 °C across 4 models
Rainfall shift
-2 %-18 to -2 % across 4 models
Hot days (≥32 °C) / yr
1 (-1)
Longest dry spell
15 days (+7)
Exposure
Moderatea real but workable projected shift
Resilience reading
70 / 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

Coastal buffer · blue–green

53 / 100 fit

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.

Low-lying coastal or wetland ground where mangrove, marsh, and dry forest meet the sea. Protect and restore the buffer — blue carbon, storm defence, nursery habitat.

12 m elevation61% forest1.9° slope3,834 mm rain/yrcorridor ~23 km

Also consider · Regenerative agroforestry estate (39) · Corridor anchor reserve (34)

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 (50/100) is a different scale that asks only whether a small lodge could fund the stewardship here — the two need not match.

What to do

  1. 01

    Ground-truth what the canopy actually is before assuming forest value.

    First visit

    Satellite land-cover cannot separate natural forest from a monoculture plantation, and the difference decides the conservation and carbon value.

    Confirm on the ground · Walk the stand: one species in rows is plantation; mixed ages and species with natural regeneration is forest. A botanist can confirm.

  2. 02

    Commission a ground soil survey before any agricultural or restoration decision.

    Before committing

    Satellites cannot read soil biology, structure, or below-ground carbon — the very things that decide what will grow — and no survey data is available here.

    Confirm on the ground · Take samples across the parcel for a lab test of organic carbon, texture, and pH, and dig a pit to read the profile and rooting depth.

  3. 03

    Carry out a field biodiversity survey to see what the records miss.

    First year

    A 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.

  4. 04

    Walk the land to scope the regenerative work before committing capital.

    First visit

    The 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

  • Standing under the canopy, is it one species or many — and which parts would you protect rather than replant?
  • 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.

Reading this land to

Talk it through with us

This reading is built from satellite and open data. It cannot see soil biology, legal tenure, or what you already know from walking the land — a 30-minute call tests the reading against the ground and sequences the work. No cost, no obligation.

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.

Generated Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:26:31 GMT · synthesized by TERRA · Dear Wise Earth.