Public reading
100 ha · 9.927, -84.152 · Costa Rica
Real upside, waiting on the work.
47th percentile for like land · Frontier tier · 39 conservation priority
20 of 30 sources answered, each named and dated ↓ · higher is better on every pillar; pressure reads calm · silent: sentinel2_ndvi, sentinel1_rtc, osm_reach…
Three things to know
A watercourse runs through the parcel.
A mapped river or stream crosses the parcel (Río Tiribí).
clear sky
Territorio Indígena lies 8.8 km from this parcel.
Official decree boundary, 8.8 km away.
light haze
No satellite soil data is available for this parcel.
The SoilGrids survey returned no data for this location.
in fog
First move · before committing
Commission a ground soil survey before any agricultural or restoration decision.
Take samples across the parcel for a lab test of organic carbon, texture, and pH, and dig a pit to read the profile and rooting depth.
then: Confirm tenure and boundaries against the legal record before relying on this reading.
One measurement per instrument, each drawn to its own scale. Hover a mark for the reading behind it.
Rain · 21 years
Up 32.3% over twenty years. Open-Meteo.
The ground and its cover
ESA WorldCover. It cannot tell natural forest from plantation.
Elevation & slope
1,023–1,206 m across the parcel. AWS terrain tiles.
Climate to 2050
From today's 20.7 °C. Expect is the honest word: this is a projection.
Species records
Log scale. A count this size also measures survey effort, not only life. GBIF.
Access
265 watercourses mapped. OpenStreetMap.
Where the parcel sits between securing it and hosting people on it, and the project that fits it best.
Best-fit model
Hold the water tower for everyone downstream.
Standalone conservation value, outside the mapped network.
Drawing the film…
The film
The place, the score, the five pillars and three findings, set over contour lines traced from this parcel’s own elevation. Every figure on screen is this reading’s; the last finding is the one it is least sure of. Nothing in it is generated.
vertical · drawn in your browser from this reading
Go deeper
Everything the instruments read about this land, in its own words: the narrative, the maps, the evidence card by card, the 2050 window, what to do first, an analyst to ask, and all 30 sources, each named and dated.
The reading in full
This 100-hectare parcel near San Rafael, Escazú, San José is land with sound foundations and clear regenerative upside. It scores 60 out of 100 on the Dear Wise Earth Land Score.
The risks that most shape a decision here: Territorio Indígena lies 8.8 km from this parcel. Neighbouring an official indigenous territory shapes the social landscape any project enters. Early, respectful contact with the ADI is both the legal-social norm and the practical path. 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: 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 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 land is gently rolling. Gentle terrain is generally workable with only minor grading for buildings or roads. The largest buildable bench is 44.55 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. 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. 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 Escazú, Escazú, San José. 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 a watercourse runs through the parcel.
The ground and its cover
The verdict, the five pillar readings, how much of the land was read, and the headline figures.
The verdict
San Rafael, Escazú, San José
47th percentile for like land · Frontier tier · 39 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
Subtropical · Neotropic · against 38 readings · 47th of all 124
Coverage
20 of 30 layers answered
Nearly complete — gaps reweighted, not guessed.
Silent: Sentinel-2, the radar, the infrastructure reach +7.
Where the capital goes
Frontierhospitality fit 70
Best-fit model
Watershed protection
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 3,030 mm of rain falls here in a year. 51% of the parcel is under tree cover, and the ground slopes 5.7° on average, enough to move water without tearing soil where roots hold it. 265 mapped watercourses cross the land (Río Tiribí, Río Virilla), and what leaves it travels 9 km downstream before the mapped path ends. The nearest road is 0.7 km off, and the nearest settlement is 1.6 km away, which is the pressure the edge lives with. By 2050 the models expect +0.8 °C and -6% rain, so every flow above runs a little differently than it does today.
Holding — the canopy record shows no meaningful loss in a generation.
Hold the water tower for everyone downstream. Steep (5.7°), wet (3,030 mm/yr), and river-laced, this parcel's highest value is the water and soil it keeps in place for everyone downstream. 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
100 hectares at San Rafael of rolling land around 1,072 m. The ground reads 51% under canopy, 40% built. Water shapes it — 3,030 mm of rain a year, 265 traced watercourses. The nearest settlement is Escazú, 1.57 km away.
Hold the water tower for everyone downstream. Steep (5.7°), wet (3,030 mm/yr), and river-laced, this parcel's highest value is the water and soil it keeps in place for everyone downstream.
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)
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)
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 infrastructure reach, osm adaptation, the soil survey, the governance record, the thermal read, the biomass map, the population grid, the hazard screen — the affected pillars were reweighted, not guessed.
Generated Sun, 20 Sep 2026 23:43:22 GMT · 19.1s · synthesized by TERRA.