Public reading
36,062 ha · 8.483, -83.395 · Costa Rica
The land remembers what it was.
49th percentile for like land · Keystone tier · 100 conservation priority
21 of 28 sources answered · higher is better on every pillar; pressure reads calm · silent: sentinel2_ndvi, sentinel1_rtc, osm_adaptation…
The reading in full
This 36,062-hectare parcel near Puerto Jiménez, Puntarenas Province, 61301 is land with sound foundations and clear regenerative upside. It scores 58 out of 100 on the Dear Wise Earth Land Score.
The risks that most shape a decision here: The rainfall archive shows an unusually steep drying signal — verify before relying on it. A swing this large more often reflects a data artifact or measurement change than real climate; water planning should wait on local records rather than build on this number. The terrain is steep, which constrains construction and raises erosion risk. Steep slopes increase building and road costs, limit machinery access, and make the land more prone to erosion and landslides. 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: 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: Rainfall is very high. Abundant water supports productive growth but raises the risk of flooding, waterlogging, and nutrient leaching, so drainage and slope matter. 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 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. 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 Puerto Jiménez, Puerto Jiménez, 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 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 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
Puerto Jiménez, Puntarenas Province, 61301
49th percentile for like land · Keystone tier · 100 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 · Neotropic · against 46 readings · 43rd of all 100
Coverage
21 of 28 layers answered
Every pillar read from live data.
Silent: Sentinel-2, the radar, osm adaptation +4.
Where the capital goes
Keystonehospitality fit 83
Best-fit model
Corridor anchor reserve
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 4,618 mm of rain falls here in a year. 93% of the parcel is under tree cover, and the ground is nearly flat (2.5° on average), so water lingers rather than runs. 67 mapped watercourses cross the land (Rio Claro, Río Pavo), and what leaves it travels 3 km downstream before the mapped path ends. The nearest road is 4.8 km off, and the nearest settlement is 11.4 km away, which is the pressure the edge lives with. By 2050 the models expect +1.3 °C and +43% rain, so every flow above runs a little differently than it does today.
Holding — the canopy has held while the rain record fell -30.9%.
Protect the keystone; hold the connection open. With 93% tree cover inside a declared biological corridor and a conservation priority of 100, the leverage here is protection: secure the core so the connection it anchors stays open. 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
36,062 hectares at Puerto Jiménez of strongly rising land around 216 m. The ground reads 93% under canopy. Water shapes it — 4,618 mm of rain a year, 67 traced watercourses. 11,282 people within 5 km, governed from Puerto Jiménez. It stands inside the Corredor Biológico Osa connectivity network (screening extent — confirm against SINAC, the national conservation agency).
Protect the keystone; hold the connection open. With 93% tree cover inside a declared biological corridor and a conservation priority of 100, the leverage here is protection: secure the core so the connection it anchors stays open.
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
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)
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, osm adaptation, the heritage record, the governance record, the thermal read, the hazard screen — the affected pillars were reweighted, not guessed.
Generated Thu, 10 Sep 2026 07:35:26 GMT · 19.1s · synthesized by TERRA.