Public reading
37,341 ha · 52.556, -0.762 · United Kingdom
Real potential, once the plan is clear.
31st percentile for like land · Frontier tier · 23 conservation priority
17 of 25 sources answered · higher is better on every pillar; pressure reads calm · silent: sentinel2_ndvi, sentinel1_rtc, osm_reach…
The reading in full
This 37,341-hectare parcel near Harborough, Leicestershire, England is workable land whose plan must come before the capital. It scores 54 out of 100 on the Dear Wise Earth Land Score.
The risks that most shape a decision here: Rainfall is low, making water availability a primary constraint. Low rainfall limits what can be grown without irrigation and raises the cost and importance of water storage and supply. 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.
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 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: 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 gently rolling. Gentle terrain is generally workable with only minor grading for buildings or roads. 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. 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.
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 is the binding constraint — rainfall is low, so what the land can carry is set by how water is stored and held 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 workable land whose plan must come before the capital. 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
Harborough, Leicestershire, England
31st percentile for like land · Frontier tier · 23 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
all readings worldwide · against 100 readings
Coverage
17 of 25 layers answered
Every pillar read from live data.
Silent: Sentinel-2, the radar, the infrastructure reach +5.
Where the capital goes
Frontierhospitality fit 60
Best-fit model
Regenerative village
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 702 mm of rain falls here in a year. 15% of the parcel is under tree cover, and the ground is nearly flat (0.7° on average), so water lingers rather than runs. 59 mapped watercourses cross the land (River Gwash, River Welland), and what leaves it travels 11 km downstream before the mapped path ends. The nearest road is 0.8 km off, the nearest settlement is 1.5 km away, and 43% of the parcel is cropped, which is the pressure the edge lives with. By 2050 the models expect +1.2 °C and -13% rain, so every flow above runs a little differently than it does today.
Holding — the canopy record shows no meaningful loss in a generation.
A community sited on the working matrix. Larger, accessible, and buildable near existing settlement, this matrix land has room for a regenerative community that keeps the habitat edges intact and restores the rest. 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
37,341 hectares at Harborough of rolling land around 104 m. The ground reads 15% under canopy, 43% worked as cropland, 5% built. Water shapes it — 702 mm of rain a year, 59 traced watercourses. 236,889 people within 5 km, governed from Leicestershire.
A community sited on the working matrix. Larger, accessible, and buildable near existing settlement, this matrix land has room for a regenerative community that keeps the habitat edges intact and restores the rest.
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
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)
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)
Upstream basin + downstream flowpath (screening hydrography)
Gridded population 2020 (parcel + 5 km ring sums)
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
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 biomass map, the siting geometry, modis fire history — the affected pillars were reweighted, not guessed.
Generated Mon, 14 Sep 2026 21:17:01 GMT · 19.1s · synthesized by TERRA.