Land Intelligence Report
Santa Elena, Monteverde, Puntarenas Province
145 ha · 10.3000, -84.8000 · Good bones. The rest is work.
The reading in full
This 145-hectare parcel near Santa Elena, Monteverde, Puntarenas Province is land with sound foundations and clear regenerative upside. It scores 72 out of 100 on the Dear Wise Earth Land Score.
The risks that most shape a decision here: 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. Recorded heritage features stand within 2 km of this parcel. A heritage-bearing landscape raises the likelihood that development here triggers archaeological assessment, and that finds during works must stop them. That is a planning fact, not a burden — and locations are deliberately not shown.
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. A watercourse runs through the parcel. On-site water supports irrigation, livestock, and habitat and can lower water-supply costs — though it may carry buffer or setback rules worth checking.
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 high and supports rain-fed use. There is enough water for most crops and forestry with little or no irrigation; dry-season storage still helps. 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. The largest buildable bench is 6.71 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. The area has a rich record of documented wildlife. High biodiversity adds conservation value, may bring species-protection rules, and can support eco-tourism or habitat-credit programs. A count this size also reflects heavy survey effort — this is a well-watched landscape, so read it as well-documented rather than proportionally richer than its quieter neighbours. 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. Road and town access are close. Good access lowers development and logistics costs but can raise encroachment pressure and land prices. 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. Official Costa Rican record places this in Monteverde, Monteverde, Puntarenas. 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: 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 look rich, with a deep record of documented life nearby. 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
Good bones. The rest is work.
Santa Elena, Monteverde, Puntarenas Province
Keystone tier · 100 conservation priority
Four of five readings
Weakest: PressureNot 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
23 of 30 layers answered
Nearly complete — gaps reweighted, not guessed.
Silent: Sentinel-2, the radar, the soil survey +4.
Where the capital goes
Keystonehospitality fit 89
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 2,358 mm of rain falls here in a year. 95% of the parcel is under tree cover, and the ground slopes 10.7° on average, enough to move water without tearing soil where roots hold it. 56 mapped watercourses cross the land (Río Peñas Blancas, Río San Luis), and what leaves it travels 17 km downstream before the mapped path ends. A road runs against the boundary, and the nearest settlement is 3.2 km away, which is the pressure the edge lives with. By 2050 the models expect +1.5 °C and -3% 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 1,513 m with 95% 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: keep the canopy whole; the loop is running the right way on its own.
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
145 hectares at Santa Elena of rolling land around 1,513 m. The ground reads 95% under canopy. Water shapes it — 2,358 mm of rain a year, 56 traced watercourses. 5,966 people within 5 km, governed from Monteverde. It stands inside the Corredor Biológico Pájaro Campana connectivity network (screening extent — confirm against SINAC, the national conservation agency).
Guard the headwaters; study what they hold. At 1,513 m with 95% 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.
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.
Screening hydrography, never a legal drainage determination.
The people around it
“Not read” means nothing of that kind is mapped within the search radius. That is a gap in the map, not a zero.
Who governs this land
Costa Rica · Puntarenas · Monteverde
What the land is exposed to — and what stands against it
The hazard screen did not answer for this parcel, so no reading is paired here — the adaptation layer alone is shown below the seismic record.
58 earthquakes of magnitude 5 or more within 100 km in 50 years, strongest M7.6 — most recent M5.2, 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.
- Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve0.6 km
- Curi Cancha Wildlife Reserve0.7 km
- Reserva biológica Bosque Nuboso Monteverde1.4 km
- Monteverde2.9 km
- Cantón de Monteverde3 km
- Centro de Rescate Las Pumas3.1 km
- Serpentario de Monteverde3.1 km
- Monteverde Theme Park3.2 km
2 recorded heritage features within 10 km, nearest under 2 km — memorial.
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 · recorded, from the historical archive.
- estimated
This parcel collects the water of Its watershed— screening hydrography (MERIT-Hydro ~90 m)
- estimated
This parcel sends its water down Downstream flowpath17.4 km mapped below the parcel— screening hydrography (MERIT-Hydro ~90 m)
- observed
This parcel is crossed by Río Peñas Blancas
- observed
This parcel is within reach of Río San Luis
- official
This parcel does connectivity work inside Corredor Biológico Pájaro Campana— PNCB screening extent — confirm against SINAC
- official
Corredor Biológico Pájaro Campana is designed to connect Reserva Biológica Bosque Nuboso Monteverde— PNCB screening extent — confirm against SINAC
- official
Corredor Biológico Pájaro Campana is designed to connect Golfo de Nicoya— PNCB screening extent — confirm against SINAC
- official
This parcel answers to MonteverdeHDI 0.778 (2022)
- official
Monteverde sits in Puntarenas
- official
Puntarenas sits in Costa Rica
- observed
This parcel lives beside Santa Elena3.23 km away · 5,966 people within 5 km
- recorded
This parcel carries the traces of Recorded heritage landscape2 recorded features within 10 km— public record only — absence is not evidence of absence
- official
This parcel stands on ground that has felt Seismic history58 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
145 ha inside the boundary
a standing block of forest
95% tree cover
- 2
catchment
its catchment
a sink: a large country drains through it
17 km of mapped path below
- 3
corridor
Corredor Biológico Pájaro Campana
core of the corridor
connects Reserva Biológica Bosque Nuboso Monteverde and Golfo de Nicoya
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 · derived, reasoned from other readings on this page · estimated, from a model, not a measurement · official, from a public or state record · scientific, from a published study.
The forest here has held for a generation.
- recordedThis canopy has held: 91% cover in 2000, 0.2% 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
Independent instruments agree: water stands on this land.
- observedA watercourse crosses the parcel itself.
- observedAnd the rain record has risen 43.1% in twenty years.
- 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 · high confidence
More water is arriving — and arriving harder.
- observedThe twenty-year rain record moved +43.1% — this is a place whose water is changing, not holding.
- observedOn 10.7° average slope, pulsed rain becomes runoff energy — erosion and flash flow, not just supply.
- estimatedThat energy leaves along a mapped 17.4 km downstream path — what this parcel's cover holds back, the people below never have to absorb.
- derivedNote the disagreement: the observed archive moved +43.1%, while the 2050 model says -3%. 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
Abundant water is also a legal shape on this land.
- observed56 watercourses are traced on and around this parcel.
- officialCosta Rica's Ley Forestal 7575 (art. 33) protects riparian strips — roughly 10–15 m along rivers in rural land, up to 50 m on steep banks and around springs.
- derivedMultiply the strips by the watercourses and a material share of the parcel is likely untouchable by law — which is a constraint for building and a gift for conservation.
What to doMap the statutory buffer zones before pricing or siting anything — the buildable area is smaller than the deed.
Bears on how much of the land is actually usable · medium confidence
The network needs this land more than its own body suggests.
- derivedThe Land Score reads 72, but conservation priority reads 100 — a 28-point gap.
- officialIts position in the corridor network does work its standalone condition does not show.
What to doValue this land by what it connects, not only what it contains — the leverage is in its position.
Bears on the corridor network · medium confidence
Height is this land's climate insurance.
- observedAt 1,513 m, today's mean sits at 17.9°C.
- estimatedThe +1.5°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.
- scientificOne caveat travels with cloud-forest elevations: warming lifts the cloud base, and the moisture belt this forest lives in moves uphill with it — refuge for what arrives from below, displacement for what already depends on the mist.
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
The road that serves this land also exposes it.
- observedA road passes 0.09 km from the parcel — access is cheap.
- officialThe parcel does connectivity work inside Corredor Biológico Pájaro Campana — and roads are where corridor edges fray first.
- derivedWhatever makes this land easy for you makes it easy for extraction: the road is both your driveway and the pressure vector.
What to doControl the access early — gates, a present caretaker, and (in Costa Rica) enrolment in the PSA forest-protection payment turn the road back into an asset.
Bears on the boundary line · 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
holding
95% tree cover on 2,358 mm of rain; 0.2% of the tree cover lost since 2000, last in 2010.
Keep the canopy whole; the loop is running the right way on its own.
The edge and the road
access → clearing at the edge → more edge → more access
holding
road 0.1 km, settlement 3.2 km; 0.2% tree cover lost since 2000.
Decide what the road is for before anything else: a gate, a planted edge and a written access rule are the cheapest interventions on this land.
Fire and dryness
dry season → fire → open ground → faster drying
holding
0.4 burns a decade on the most-burned ground, last in 2013.
Break the loop at the fuel: firebreaks on the ridges and shade over the open ground shorten the dry season the fire needs.
Reading the place
This 145-hectare parcel near Santa Elena, Monteverde, Puntarenas Province is land with sound foundations and clear regenerative upside, scoring 72 out of 100. The reading that most shapes the work here is that this ground has a recorded seismic history. 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.
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.
58 earthquakes ≥ M5 within 100 km in 50 years, strongest M7.6, most recent M5.2 in 2026 (USGS catalog).
Recorded heritage features stand within 2 km of this parcel.
A heritage-bearing landscape raises the likelihood that development here triggers archaeological assessment, and that finds during works must stop them. That is a planning fact, not a burden — and locations are deliberately not shown.
2 recorded features within 10 km, nearest under 2 km. 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.
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.
95% of the parcel reads as tree cover (satellite land-cover mapping). Naturalness is not verified.
A watercourse runs through the parcel.
On-site water supports irrigation, livestock, and habitat and can lower water-supply costs — though it may carry buffer or setback rules worth checking.
A mapped river or stream crosses the parcel (Río Peñas Blancas).
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: +1.5 °C mean temperature, -3% rainfall. Exposure rated Moderate.
Rainfall is high and supports rain-fed use.
There is enough water for most crops and forestry with little or no irrigation; dry-season storage still helps.
2,358 mm of rain per year. A watercourse crosses the parcel. The archive's 20-year trend reads about +43% — 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 17.4 km downstream of it (MERIT-Hydro screening hydrography).
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.
Mean elevation 1,513 m, mean slope 11°, 198 m of relief.
The largest buildable bench is 6.71 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.
24% of the parcel lies at or under 10°; largest contiguous piece 6.71 ha at about 1,461 m; read on ~10 m cells from the Terrarium DEM.
The area has a rich record of documented wildlife.
High biodiversity adds conservation value, may bring species-protection rules, and can support eco-tourism or habitat-credit programs. A count this size also reflects heavy survey effort — this is a well-watched landscape, so read it as well-documented rather than proportionally richer than its quieter neighbours.
319,327 biodiversity records nearby, including Lampornis calolaemus and Colibri cyanotus (GBIF, the global species-record archive).
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.
Road and town access are close.
Good access lowers development and logistics costs but can raise encroachment pressure and land prices.
About 0.09 km to the nearest road, 3.23 km to Santa Elena.
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.
5,966 people live within 5 km (WorldPop 2020); nearest hospital or clinic 2.4 km (Emergencias Monteverde); school 0.9 km; airstrip 26.7 km.
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 · Puntarenas · Monteverde — canton HDI 0.778 (2022, PNUD/UCR), 4,155 people in the governing unit.
Official Costa Rican record places this in Monteverde, Monteverde, Puntarenas.
National cadastral and administrative data ground the parcel in the legal record — the basis for title, permitting, and tax diligence.
Jurisdiction: Monteverde, Monteverde, Puntarenas. 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
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 look rich, with a deep record of documented life nearby. 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
High-value corridor land to secure before it is lost.
high-value connectivity land to secure now
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.
Within the Corredor Biológico Pájaro Campana (screening) · Área de Conservación Arenal-Tempisque (ACAT)
Inside the Corredor Biológico Pájaro Campana, this reads as intact habitat to secure, scoring 100 out of 100 for conservation priority. It is a keystone: high-value connectivity land to secure now, before it turns over. A small, low-footprint operation (fit 89/100) 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.
The parcel falls within the Corredor Biológico Pájaro Campana (screening).
This is a declared biological corridor in Área de Conservación Arenal-Tempisque (ACAT) — land inside it carries a national connectivity mandate and is where conservation capital compounds, joining protected areas rather than standing alone. The corridor links Reserva Biológica Bosque Nuboso Monteverde, Golfo de Nicoya.
Centroid inside the PNCB screening extent for this corridor. Extent is approximate — confirm the parcel against the official SINAC/PNCB record.
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.
95% tree cover.
A small hospitality operation could carry the conservation here.
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 89/100, drawing on standing forest, protected land alongside, water on site. Site any building on the already-worked ground, not the habitat.
Capital moves
- 01
Secure this land first — through purchase, or a conservation easement that survives a change of owner.
Before committingIntact 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.
- 02
Protect the standing forest and remove the active threats to it.
First visitThe 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.
- 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 check the Certificado de Sostenibilidad Turística (CST) and local zoning before designing anything.
- 04
Set a connectivity baseline and re-read it — camera traps aimed at the movement the corridor was declared to carry.
OngoingFunders 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 — an altitudinal corridor carrying the three-wattled bellbird's migration from the Monteverde cloud forest down to the Gulf of Nicoya mangroves.
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, 2004–2024 · mm
Exposure · Moderate
2050 sits within a single planning horizon — about 24 years out. The models expect seasons here about 1.5°C warmer than today's, with 3% 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
Río Peñas Blancas · Río San Luis · Quebrada Camastro · Quebrada Guaria
Soil · 0–30 cm
Source unavailable for this parcel.
Terrain & cover
Siting
Measured on ~10.0 m cells across 14,400 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
Lampornis calolaemus · Colibri cyanotus · Heliodoxa jacula · Campylopterus hemileucurus
Pressure
Forest history · since 2000
Hansen Global Forest Change GFC-2023-v1.11
Record & context
What the state and its institutions say about this ground.
Costa Rica ecological corridor
Corredor Biológico Pájaro Campana
An altitudinal corridor carrying the three-wattled bellbird's migration from the Monteverde cloud forest down to the Gulf of Nicoya mangroves.
Connects · Reserva Biológica Bosque Nuboso Monteverde · Golfo de Nicoya
PNCB / SINAC — Corredores Biológicos (screening reference) · approximate screening extent — confirm against the official SINAC / PNCB record
See the corridor network →Costa Rica land record
SNIT Costa Rica (IGN / IDECORI) · official national data — verify title & permits locally
Regional illness · dengue
Monteverde district does not appear in the national district-level dengue table for 2013–2018 — a gap in the record, not evidence of absence. Nationally, Costa Rica recorded 31,259 dengue notifications in 2024.
OpenDengue (PAHO / Ministerio de Salud record) · notification counts, not population-adjusted — historical burden geography, not the current season. Ground-truth with the Ministerio de Salud's weekly bulletin.
Below the surface
The fungal networks that move water and nutrients between roots.
Underground fungal networks
SPUN Underground Atlas (Van Nuland et al. 2025) · 1 km model of underground fungal biodiversity · hotspots = global top decile of predicted richness
Future · the horizons the engine has read
Now
- Mean temperature
- 17.9 °C
- Rain, latest year (2024)
- 3,103 mm
- Hot days (≥32 °C) / yr
- 0
- Longest dry spell
- 30 days
- Mean elevation
- 1,513 m
The rain row is one year alone — the Water panel's 2,358 mm is the long mean, and with the record up 43% in twenty years, recent years sit above it by design.
2050
- Temperature shift
- +1.5 °C+1.5 to +1.9 °C across 4 models
- Rainfall shift
- -3 %-20 to -3 % across 4 models
- Hot days (≥32 °C) / yr
- 0
- Longest dry spell
- 29 days (-1)
- Exposure
- Moderate — a real but workable projected shift
- Resilience reading
- 69 / 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
98 / 100 fitGuard the headwaters; study what they hold.
At 1,513 m with 95% 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.
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 · Corridor anchor reserve (90) · Ecolodge / retreat (77)
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 (89/100) 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
Ground-truth what the canopy actually is before assuming forest value.
First visitSatellite 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.
- 02
Commission a ground soil survey before any agricultural or restoration decision.
Before committingSatellites 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.
- 03
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
- 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.
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 · 23 layers→
Overpass (waterways, highways, places, protected areas)
Occurrence records (count + top species)
Nearest hospital, school, fuel, airport, port, power grid
Nearest fire station, emergency post, flood/coastal defence, water works, monitoring station, coastline — mapped presence, not effectiveness
Recorded historic/heritage features within 10 km — generalized to counts, classes and distance bands; never coordinates
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
WorldCover 2021 v200
Global Surface Water v1.4 — occurrence & seasonality
Global Forest Change (tree cover 2000 + annual loss)
Top-decile hotspots of predicted AM + ECM fungal richness (Van Nuland et al. 2025, Nature; Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.14871588)
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
Last burn year and burn count per 500 m pixel over the record since 2001
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 soil survey, the governance record, the thermal read, the biomass map, the hazard screen — the affected pillars were reweighted, not guessed.
Generated Mon, 14 Sep 2026 23:36:32 GMT · 18.3s · synthesized by TERRA.
Generated Mon, 14 Sep 2026 23:36:32 GMT · synthesized by TERRA · Dear Wise Earth.