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Shaded-relief view of the land around Ángeles, San Ramón, Alajuela Province, the parcel boundary drawn in gold

8 ha inside the gold line

250 m

Shaded relief · AWS Terrain Tiles

Ángeles, San Ramón, Alajuela Province

8 ha · 10.189, -84.486 · Costa Rica

48out of 100 · Land ScoreCultivate

The soil is ready before the plan is.

14th percentile for like land · Corridor tier · 72 conservation priority

Water: not read
Soil: 100
Ecology: 10
Climate: not read
Pressure: 74

8 of 13 sources answered · higher is better on every pillar; pressure reads calm · silent: sentinel2_ndvi, sentinel1_rtc, open_meteo_climate…

The reading in full

This 8-hectare parcel near Ángeles, San Ramón, Alajuela Province is workable land whose plan must come before the capital. It scores 48 out of 100 on the Dear Wise Earth Land Score.

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.

The wider readings: The land is gently rolling. Gentle terrain is generally workable with only minor grading for buildings or roads. 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.

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, 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 soil is rich in organic carbon, a strong base for farming and restoration.

The ground and its cover

Terrain · shaded relief — Ángeles, San Ramón, Alajuela Province — Terrain · shaded relief · AWS Terrain Tiles

Land cover · ESA WorldCover 2021 — Ángeles, San Ramón, Alajuela Province — 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

48out of 100 · Land ScoreCultivate

The soil is ready before the plan is.

Ángeles, San Ramón, Alajuela Province

ReclaimCultivateRestoreAnchor

14th percentile for like land · Corridor tier · 72 conservation priority

Three of five readings

Water—

Soil100

Ecology10

Climate—

Pressure74

Weakest: EcologyNot read: Water, Climate

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

14thpercentile

Neotropic · against 93 readings · 14th of all 100

Coverage

55%

weight read

8 of 13 layers answered

Partly read; treat the score as provisional.

Silent: Sentinel-2, the radar, the rain record +2.

Where the capital goes

72/ 100 priority

Corridorhospitality fit 58

Best-fit model

Corridor anchor reserve

36 / 100

Fit from published rules over the indicators.

The land in numbers

Area

8.1ha

Elevation

1,090m

1,070–1,107 m

Slope

7.2°

Buildable bench

not read

Forest cover

18%

Canopy height

not read

Rainfall

not read

Warming to 2050

not read

Soil carbon

75.1g/kg

pH 5.3

Nearest road

1.6km

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

18% of the parcel is under tree cover, and the ground slopes 7.2° on average, enough to move water without tearing soil where roots hold it. 55 mapped watercourses cross the land (Río Barranca, Río La Paz). The nearest road is 1.6 km off, which is the pressure the edge lives with.

Holding — 3.7% of the tree cover lost since 2000.

To help: keep the ground covered through the dry season; rested pasture and cover crops turn this loop around on gentle slopes.

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

8 hectares at Ángeles of gentle land around 1,090 m. The ground reads 18% under canopy. Water shapes it — 55 traced watercourses. It stands inside the Corredor Biológico Montes del Aguacate connectivity network (screening extent — confirm against SINAC, the national conservation agency).

Its vocationreconnect

Protect the keystone; hold the connection open. With 18% tree cover inside a declared biological corridor and a conservation priority of 72, the leverage here is protection: secure the core so the connection it anchors stays open.

1,090 m elevation18% forest7.2° slopeinside a corridorCorridor tier — restoration compounds here

Its trajectoryholding— the canopy record shows no meaningful loss in a generation.

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 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 · derived, reasoned from other readings on this page · observed, measured from satellite or map data · official, from a public or state record.

The forest here has held for a generation.

recordedThis canopy has held: 38% cover in 2000, 3.7% 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

The weakest number here is a silence, not a judgment.

derivedThe ecology pillar reads 10 — but it leans on zero recorded wildlife observations, and absence of records usually reflects absence of surveys, not absence of life.
derivedTreat that pillar — and the composite it drags — as a floor: one field survey could move this reading materially, in only one direction.

What to doCommission a rapid biodiversity survey before treating the score as the land's ceiling.

Bears on the score itself · high confidence

Abundant water is also a legal shape on this land.

observed55 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 48, but conservation priority reads 72 — a 24-point gap.
officialThe gap is the point: this parcel is a break in the corridor, and closing a break buys more connectivity than protecting an equal hectare of intact core.

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

For its kind of land, its ecology is unusually weak.

derivedAgainst 93 readings of like land (Neotropic), this parcel's ecology ranks in the bottom 5%.
derivedAn unusual weakness is rarely bad luck — something specific happened or is happening here that its peers escaped.

What to doMake ecology the first diligence question on the ground: find the cause before pricing the land.

Bears on what this land is, relative to its kind · medium confidence

The road that serves this land also exposes it.

observedA road passes 1.6 km from the parcel — access is cheap.
officialThe parcel does connectivity work inside Corredor Biológico Montes del Aguacate — 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.

Open ground and soil

bare or grazed ground → compaction → runoff → thinner soil

holding

82% open ground on a 7.2° average slope.

Keep the ground covered through the dry season; rested pasture and cover crops turn this loop around on gentle slopes.

The edge and the road

access → clearing at the edge → more edge → more access

holding

road 1.6 km; 3.7% tree cover lost since 2000.

Distance is doing the work here; keep it, and do not build the road that would end it.

Reading the place

This 8-hectare parcel near Ángeles, San Ramón, Alajuela Province is workable land whose plan must come before the capital, scoring 48 out of 100. Its main strength is that the soil is rich in organic carbon, a strong base for farming and restoration. The first move: carry out a field biodiversity survey to see what the records miss.

Opportunitymedium confidence

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.

75.1 g/kg soil organic carbon in the top 30 cm, clay loam texture, pH 5.3 (ISRIC SoilGrids).

Terrainhigh confidence

The land is gently rolling.

Gentle terrain is generally workable with only minor grading for buildings or roads.

Mean elevation 1,090 m, mean slope 7°, 37 m of relief.

Biodiversitylow confidence

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.

Only 0 biodiversity records nearby (GBIF, the global species-record archive).

Accesshigh confidence

The parcel is relatively remote.

Distance from roads and towns means lower encroachment pressure and more privacy, but higher transport and operating costs.

About 1.6 km to the nearest road.

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, 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 soil is rich in organic carbon, a strong base for farming and restoration.

Where the capital goes · corridor & deployment

72Conservation priority

CorridorRestoration gap

Inside the corridor network, with restoration upside.

inside the network, with restoration upside

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 Montes del Aguacate (screening) · Área de Conservación Pacífico Central (ACOPAC)

Inside the Corredor Biológico Montes del Aguacate, this reads as a break in the corridor to close, scoring 72 out of 100 for conservation priority. It sits in the corridor network, where capital spent on restoration compounds into connectivity. A small, low-footprint operation (fit 58/100) could fund the work from the already-worked ground.

58/100

Hospitality fit

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.

Corridormedium confidence

The parcel falls within the Corredor Biológico Montes del Aguacate (screening).

This is a declared biological corridor in Área de Conservación Pacífico Central (ACOPAC) — land inside it carries a national connectivity mandate and is where conservation capital compounds, joining protected areas rather than standing alone. The corridor links Cordillera Volcánica Central, Cerros de Turrubares, Pacífico Central.

Centroid inside the PNCB screening extent for this corridor. Extent is approximate — confirm the parcel against the official SINAC/PNCB record.

Conservationmedium confidence

This reads as a gap in the corridor — restoring cover here closes a break in connectivity.

A cleared or thin stretch inside the network is the highest-leverage place to restore: replanting or assisted regeneration here reconnects habitat that is otherwise cut, which a stand of forest outside the corridor cannot do.

18% tree cover.

Hospitalitylow confidence

A modest hospitality layer is possible, but it is not the strongest card.

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 58/100, drawing on protected land alongside. Site any building on the already-worked ground, not the habitat.

Capital moves

01
Tie up the land before restoring it — purchase or an easement that holds through a sale.
Before committing
Restoration is a multi-year investment; without secure tenure the connectivity it builds can be undone by the next owner.
Confirm on the ground · Trace the title with a local lawyer and pull the cadastral record; check eligibility for FONAFIFO's PSA payment (Pago por Servicios Ambientales — Costa Rica pays landowners to keep or restore forest) for reforestation or regeneration on the parcel.
02
Close the gap: replant the cleared ground and let the neighbouring forest seed back in.
First year
This parcel is where the corridor is broken, so restoring cover here reconnects habitat — the single highest-leverage ecological move on the land.
Confirm on the ground · Walk the parcel with a restoration ecologist to map what to plant and where natural regeneration will do the work on its own; confirm the seed sources in the adjacent forest.
03
Site a small, low-footprint hospitality operation on the already-worked ground to fund the stewardship.
Once the land is secured
A 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.
Ongoing
Funders 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 — a piedmont corridor tying the central volcanic range to the Pacific slope across the Aguacate hills.

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.

How it compares

14thpercentile · Neotropic

Ranked against 93 readings · same region

14th percentile against all 100 readings so far — the cohort rank above is the fairer one; this is the wider one.

Reads below most of the 93 readings logged in Neotropic — stronger than 14%. Soil is its strongest signal here (96th percentile), ecology its weakest (5th). Rainfall is declining across the landscape to the south-east.

Percentile by reading · higher is better land

Soil

96th

Ecology

5th

Low pressure

74th

Landscape · 10 readings within 60 km

·Rainfall is declining across the landscape to the south-east
·Land reads stronger toward the south-west

Percentiles compare this reading against the growing corpus of public TERRA readings in like land — not all land on Earth. They sharpen as the wall grows.

The physical frame

Climate, water, soil, and shape — what the land is made of and what moves across it.

Climate · to 2050

Source unavailable for this parcel.

Water

—mm/yr

Rainfall

—%

20-yr trend

1.4km

To watercourse

Río Barranca · Río La Paz · Río Espino · Río San Luis

Soil · 0–30 cm

75.1g/kg

Org. carbon

5.3

35%

Sand

36%

Clay

Clay loam

Terrain & cover

1,090m

Elevation

7.2°

Mean slope

18%

Forest

Built

Grassland 82%Tree cover 18%

The living surface

What grows here, what is being lost, and what presses on it.

Ecology

Recorded wildlife observations

GBIF · the global species-record archive

Pressure

1.6km

To road

—km

To settlement

Forest history · since 2000

38%

Tree cover 2000

3.7%

Cover lost

2010

Latest loss

Hansen Global Forest Change GFC-2023-v1.11

Record & context

What the state and its institutions say about this ground.

Costa Rica ecological corridor

Within

Corridor

screening extent

Área de Conservación Pacífico Central (ACOPAC)

Conservation area

Corredor Biológico Montes del Aguacate

A piedmont corridor tying the central volcanic range to the Pacific slope across the Aguacate hills.

Connects · Cordillera Volcánica Central · Cerros de Turrubares · Pacífico Central

PNCB / SINAC — Corredores Biológicos (screening reference) · approximate screening extent — confirm against the official SINAC / PNCB record

See the corridor network →

Best-fit regenerative model

Corridor anchor reserve

36 / 100 fit

Protect the keystone; hold the connection open.

With 18% tree cover inside a declared biological corridor and a conservation priority of 72, the leverage here is protection: secure the core so the connection it anchors stays open.

High-value habitat inside the connectivity network. The move is to secure it — purchase or easement — so the corridor it anchors stays unbroken.

1,090 m elevation18% forest7.2° slopeinside a corridor

Also consider · Ecolodge / retreat (32) · Restoration frontier (31)

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 (58/100) 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
Carry out a field biodiversity survey to see what the records miss.
First year
A thin record here usually reflects little survey effort, not little life; what actually lives on the parcel shapes both its value and its constraints.
Confirm on the ground · Have an ecologist survey across seasons; local naturalists and birders often already know the site.
02
Confirm tenure and boundaries against the legal record before relying on this reading.
Before committing
The satellite record cannot see title, easements, or where the legal boundary actually runs — the things that govern what you can do here.
Confirm on the ground · Pull the title and cadastral record, and walk the boundary against it on the ground.
03
Confirm soil and water on the ground, then design to what the land can carry.
First visit
The land is workable, but the plan has to be built to its limits rather than around a hoped-for use.
Confirm on the ground · Ground-truth the key constraints before committing to a use, then size the plan to them.

Questions to sit with

The soil is a real asset here — what use would build it further rather than spend it down?
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.

Reading this land to

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.

Schedule a 30-min call →See services or email us

Sources & method · 8 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)

Place — OpenStreetMap / Nominatim

Nominatim reverse geocode

settlement · live

ODbL 1.0

Terrain — AWS Terrarium (Mapzen)

Terrarium elevation tiles

~10 m (z12) · 2017

Open (attribution)

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

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 rain record, the governance record, the thermal read — the affected pillars were reweighted, not guessed.

Generated Wed, 01 Jul 2026 22:30:43 GMT · 12.1s · synthesized by TERRA.