Public reading
2 ha · 9.934, -83.890 · Costa Rica
The water is willing. Follow it.
58th percentile for like land · Corridor tier · 69 conservation priority
20 of 30 sources answered · higher is better on every pillar; pressure reads calm · silent: sentinel2_ndvi, sentinel1_rtc, osm_reach…
The reading in full
This 2-hectare parcel near Tierra Blanca, Cartago, Cartago Province is land with sound foundations and clear regenerative upside. It scores 62 out of 100 on the Dear Wise Earth Land Score.
The risks that most shape a decision here: Rainfall has been declining over the past two decades. Water planning should target the drier conditions ahead, not today's averages; storage and drought-tolerant choices matter more here. Hazard screening rates this district high for earthquake, landslide. A high screening class means the hazard must be taken into account in planning and design — it is a division-scale flag from mixed-vintage hazard sets, not a site assessment. Commission local hazard mapping before siting anything permanent. The district screens medium for urban flood, and nothing is mapped against it within reach. A hazard class is one fact; the same class with no fire station, flood works, water works, or emergency post mapped within reach is another — an adaptation gap. The works may exist unmapped, so confirm on the ground; but plan as if the response would have to be the parcel's own. 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. A watercourse lies close to the parcel. Nearby surface water improves access to irrigation and supply and adds habitat value, though rights and distance still affect how usable it is. This is corridor land where adaptation capital has the most to protect. Two readings that are usually kept apart say the same thing here: the land matters to the network, and the hazard classes that threaten it are unanswered within reach. Closing that gap — response, works, water — protects connectivity, not just this parcel. That is the place to spend first.
The wider readings: Models project a warmer and wetter climate here by 2050. Expect a warmer and wetter 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 parcel sits at high elevation. Higher ground is cooler, which changes crop suitability and can ease heat stress, but may add access and frost considerations. There is no meaningful flat ground on this parcel. Every structure, track and turning circle here starts with earthworks. That is a cost line before it is a design question, and on erosion-prone ground it is a permanent maintenance one. 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 parcel is relatively remote. Distance from roads and towns means lower encroachment pressure and more privacy, but higher transport and operating costs. 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 Potrero Cerrado, Oreamuno, Cartago. 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 land reads as holding rather than actively regenerating: the standing cover is intact, but the water or vegetation signal is under strain, so the trajectory turns on how the coming dry years are managed. 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 ground and its cover
The verdict, the five pillar readings, how much of the land was read, and the headline figures.
The verdict
Tierra Blanca, Cartago, Cartago Province
58th percentile for like land · Corridor tier · 69 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
Neotropic · against 93 readings · 58th of all 100
Coverage
20 of 30 layers answered
Every pillar read from live data.
Silent: Sentinel-2, the radar, the infrastructure reach +7.
Where the capital goes
Corridorhospitality fit 53
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 3,155 mm of rain falls here in a year. 5% of the parcel is under tree cover, and the ground slopes 13.3° on average, enough to move water without tearing soil where roots hold it. 74 mapped watercourses cross the land (Rio Reventado, Quebrada Norberta), and what leaves it travels 5 km downstream before the mapped path ends. The nearest road is 1 km off, the nearest settlement is 2.1 km away, and 10% of the parcel is cropped, which is the pressure the edge lives with. By 2050 the models expect +1.6 °C and +2% rain, so every flow above runs a little differently than it does today.
Holding — the canopy has held while the rain record fell -10.4%.
Guard the headwaters; study what they hold. At 2,279 m with 5% tree cover inside the corridor network, 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
2 hectares at Tierra Blanca of gentle land around 2,279 m. The ground reads 5% under canopy, 10% worked as cropland, 4% built. Water shapes it — 3,155 mm of rain a year, 74 traced watercourses. The nearest settlement is Potrero Cerrado, 2.05 km away, governed from Cartago. It stands inside the Corredor Biológico Volcánica Central–Talamanca connectivity network (screening extent — confirm against SINAC, the national conservation agency).
Guard the headwaters; study what they hold. At 2,279 m with 5% tree cover inside the corridor network, 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.
Overpass (waterways, highways, places, protected areas)
Occurrence records (count + top species)
Nearest fire station, emergency post, flood/coastal defence, water works, monitoring station, coastline — mapped presence, not effectiveness
Named places and features of the surrounding landscape (titles + distances)
Administrative units, cadastral parcels, agrological land-capability, protected areas, Holdridge life zones (WFS)
Declared biological corridors (bundled screening reference of official corridors; approximate extents — confirm against SINAC/PNCB)
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
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)
Multi-hazard classes at admin-division scale (screening-grade; hazard sets ~2015–2020)
M ≥ 5 events within 100 km, past 50 years
Administrative hierarchy + structured facts of the governing unit
Official decree-delimited territory boundaries (legal-constraint overlay; never scored or ranked)
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, the heritage record, the governance record, the thermal read, the biomass map, the underground atlas, the population grid, modis fire history — the affected pillars were reweighted, not guessed.
Generated Wed, 16 Sep 2026 18:27:54 GMT · 19.1s · synthesized by TERRA.