Public reading
16,338 ha · 9.647, -85.134 · Costa Rica
The water is willing. Follow it.
56th percentile for like land · Frontier tier · 56 conservation priority
24 of 28 sources answered · higher is better on every pillar; pressure reads calm · silent: sentinel2_ndvi, sentinel1_rtc, worldbank_wgi…
The reading in full
This 16,338-hectare parcel near Cóbano, Puntarenas, Puntarenas Province is land with sound foundations and clear regenerative upside. It scores 62 out of 100 on the Dear Wise Earth Land Score.
The risks that most shape a decision here: Dry spells are projected to run about 94 days by 2050. A long rain-free stretch — not the yearly total — is what empties soil moisture and storage; size water storage and choose drought-tolerant planting to the dry spell, not the annual average. 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. A meaningful share of this land's tree cover has been cleared since 2000. Long-term loss points to historical or ongoing clearing pressure and a lower conservation baseline; confirm the legal status and whether clearing is still active. Hazard screening rates this district high for urban flood, coastal flood, earthquake, landslide, tsunami, wildfire. A high screening class means the hazard must be taken into account in planning and design — it is a division-scale flag from mixed-vintage hazard sets, not a site assessment. Commission local hazard mapping before siting anything permanent. The district screens material for urban flood, coastal flood, tsunami, wildfire, with nothing mapped against them within reach. A hazard class is one fact; the same class with no fire station, flood works, water works, or emergency post mapped within reach is another — an adaptation gap. The works may exist unmapped, so confirm on the ground; but plan as if the response would have to be the parcel's own. 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: 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. This land sits on a mapped global hotspot of underground fungal biodiversity. Mycorrhizal networks move nutrients, water, and carbon through the soil; over 90% of these hotspots lie outside protected areas, so intact underground biodiversity here is rare conservation and restoration value that no above-ground survey shows.
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. 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. 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. 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 Cóbano, Puntarenas, 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: The longer record suggests a land that has been drawn down rather than held: about 8% of its tree cover has been cleared since 2000, most recently in 2023. It reads as opened rather than recovered, but the history is the reason the foundational work comes first. 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
Cóbano, Puntarenas, Puntarenas Province
56th percentile for like land · Frontier tier · 56 conservation priority
Five readings
Weakest: Climate
All five read on one axis: higher is better. Pressure scores calm, so a high number means little human pressure on this land.
Standing
Tropical humid · Neotropic · against 26 readings · 58th of all 100
Coverage
24 of 28 layers answered
Every pillar read from live data.
Silent: Sentinel-2, the radar, the governance record +1.
Where the capital goes
Frontierhospitality fit 74
Best-fit model
Ecolodge / retreat
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 2,909 mm of rain falls here in a year. 82% of the parcel is under tree cover, and the ground is nearly flat (0.9° on average), so water lingers rather than runs. 151 mapped watercourses cross the land (Río Montezuma, Río Arío), and what leaves it travels 8 km downstream before the mapped path ends. The nearest road is 3.6 km off, and the nearest settlement is 6.2 km away, which is the pressure the edge lives with. By 2050 the models expect +0.9 °C and +34% rain, so every flow above runs a little differently than it does today.
Holding — the canopy record shows no meaningful loss in a generation.
Fund conservation through low-footprint hospitality. Accessible and scenic beside standing habitat, with a hospitality fit of 74/100, this land can carry a small, low-footprint operation whose revenue funds the conservation. To help: stop the clearing at the streams first: every metre of canopy kept along water holds the loop together.
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
16,338 hectares at Cóbano of rolling land around 136 m. The ground reads 82% under canopy. Water shapes it — 2,909 mm of rain a year, 151 traced watercourses. 13,108 people within 5 km, governed from Puntarenas.
Fund conservation through low-footprint hospitality. Accessible and scenic beside standing habitat, with a hospitality fit of 74/100, this land can carry a small, low-footprint operation whose revenue funds the conservation.
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
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)
Top-decile hotspots of predicted AM + ECM fungal richness (Van Nuland et al. 2025, Nature; Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.14871588)
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
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 governance record, the thermal read — the affected pillars were reweighted, not guessed.
Generated Thu, 10 Sep 2026 07:36:59 GMT · 18.6s · synthesized by TERRA.