Public reading
145 ha · 10.300, -84.800 · Costa Rica
Good bones. The rest is work.
80th percentile for like land · Keystone tier · 100 conservation priority
23 of 30 sources answered · higher is better on every pillar; pressure reads calm · silent: sentinel2_ndvi, sentinel1_rtc, soilgrids…
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 ground and its cover
The verdict, the five pillar readings, how much of the land was read, and the headline figures.
The verdict
Santa Elena, Monteverde, Puntarenas Province
80th percentile for like land · 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
Neotropic · against 93 readings · 80th of all 100
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.
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.
This land, over time
Read 2 times since Jun 12, 2026. The score has held between the first reading and the latest. Each reading asked every source afresh, so a change is in the record, not in the lens.