Public reading

Shaded-relief view of the land around Las Tablas, Los Santos, Panama, the parcel boundary drawn in gold49 ha inside the gold line
500 m
Shaded relief · AWS Terrain Tiles

Las Tablas, Los Santos, Panama

49 ha · 7.808, -80.216 · Panama

47out of 100 · Land ScoreCultivate

The upside is here. Shape it deliberately.

10th percentile for like land · Frontier tier · 10 conservation priority

Water
80
Soil
58
Ecology
13
Climate
15
Pressure
62

15 of 22 sources answered · higher is better on every pillar; pressure reads calm · silent: sentinel2_ndvi, sentinel1_rtc, osm_reach…

The reading in full

This 49-hectare parcel near Las Tablas, Los Santos, Panama is workable land whose plan must come before the capital. It scores 47 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. This area is highly exposed to projected climate change by 2050. Large shifts in temperature and rainfall can change what the land can support, so any plan should be built around the projected conditions, not current ones. This ground has a recorded seismic history. Repeated strong earthquakes within reach shape how anything here should be built — seismic design codes, slope stability under shaking, and insurance all follow from it.

Where the upside lies: The parcel sits near protected land. Proximity to protected areas raises conservation value and can open eligibility for connectivity or buffer programs, but may also bring land-use restrictions.

The wider readings: 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. 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. Soil organic carbon is moderate. The soil is workable but will benefit from cover cropping and organic inputs to build fertility before intensive use. 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.

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 workable land whose plan must come before the capital. Its clearest strength to build from is that the parcel sits near protected land.

The ground and its cover

Terrain · shaded relief — Las Tablas, Los Santos, Panama
500 m
Terrain · shaded relief · AWS Terrain Tiles
Land cover · ESA WorldCover 2021 — Las Tablas, Los Santos, Panama
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

47out of 100 · Land ScoreCultivate

The upside is here. Shape it deliberately.

Las Tablas, Los Santos, Panama

10th percentile for like land · Frontier tier · 10 conservation priority

Five readings

Water80strong
Soil58fair
Ecology13watch
Climate15watch
Pressure62fair

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

10thpercentile

Tropical humid · Neotropic · against 26 readings · 12th of all 100

Coverage

15 of 22 layers answered

Every pillar read from live data.

Silent: Sentinel-2, the radar, the infrastructure reach +4.

Where the capital goes

10/ 100 priority

Frontierhospitality fit 49

Best-fit model

Regenerative agroforestry estate

59 / 100

Fit from published rules over the indicators.

The land in numbers

Area
49ha
Elevation
17m
12–25 m
Slope
1.0°
Buildable bench
not read
Forest cover
2%
Canopy height
not read
Rainfall
2,837mm/yr
-13% over 20 yr
Warming to 2050
+1.0°C
rain +39%
Soil carbon
30.4g/kg
pH 5.8
Nearest road
3.4km
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 2,837 mm of rain falls here in a year. 2% of the parcel is under tree cover, and the ground is nearly flat (1° on average), so water lingers rather than runs. 6 mapped watercourses cross the land (Quebrada Santo Domingo). The nearest road is 3.4 km off, the nearest settlement is 4 km away, and 42% of the parcel is cropped, which is the pressure the edge lives with. By 2050 the models expect +1 °C and +39% rain, so every flow above runs a little differently than it does today.

Holdingthe canopy has held while the rain record fell -13.3%.

Regenerate working land into productive canopy. Gentle working ground (42% already cropland) with 2,837 mm of rain a year — well set up to convert into multi-strata agroforestry that carries yield and canopy on the same hectare. 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

49 hectares at Las Tablas of gentle land around 17 m. The ground reads 2% under canopy, 42% worked as cropland. Water shapes it — 2,837 mm of rain a year, 6 traced watercourses. The nearest settlement is El Manantial, 4.03 km away, governed from Las Tablas.

Its vocationcultivate

Regenerate working land into productive canopy. Gentle working ground (42% already cropland) with 2,837 mm of rain a year — well set up to convert into multi-strata agroforestry that carries yield and canopy on the same hectare.

17 m elevation2% forest42% cropland1.0° slopeFrontier tier — outside the mapped network
Its trajectoryholding, but dryingthe canopy has held while the rain record fell -13.3%.

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 · 15 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)
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
Soil — ISRIC SoilGrids v2

SoilGrids v2.0 (SOC, pH, sand, clay; 0–30 cm)

250 m · 2020
CC-BY 4.0
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
Underground fungal networks — SPUN Underground Atlas

Top-decile hotspots of predicted AM + ECM fungal richness (Van Nuland et al. 2025, Nature; Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.14871588)

1 km · 2025 (v1.0)
No explicit license on the archive — terms requested from SPUN; attribution given
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)

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 governance record, the thermal read, the population grid, the hazard screen — the affected pillars were reweighted, not guessed.

Generated Sun, 30 Aug 2026 22:08:31 GMT · 19.1s · synthesized by TERRA.