Public water reading
Mexico
Mexico, Mexico · 20.1754, -87.4419 · two hundred sixty-one hectares of water
Clear water, held by its edge.
This stretch of sea is living water whose work is protection, not repair, scoring 79 out of 100. Protected land sits beside this water. A living fringe still filters this shore. 10 of 12 sources answered; the silent ones lowered confidence, not the score.
Five readings
10 of 12 sources answered · 100% of pillar weight read · silent: the population grid, the hazard screen
The water
What this body is, how it reads from orbit, whether it stays, and the basin it sits in.
The body
Clarity · from orbit
One Sentinel-2 pass, 2026-09-02, 25% cloud in the scene. Indices, not concentrations: a bottle to a lab decides; this says where to dip it.
Permanence · 1984–2021
The basin
The edge
What the shore is made of, what lives here, what presses on the water, and what the climate does to it.
The shore · 300 m ring
- Mangroves 49%
- Tree cover 27%
- Grassland 11%
- Built-up 8%
- Bare / sparse 5%
- Wetland 1%
Life
Most recorded: Pelecanus occidentalis · Thalasseus maximus · Fregata magnificens · Quiscalus mexicanus
Reserva de la Biósfera Caribe Mexicano
Pressure
Climate · to 2050
Expect is the honest verb: the middle of a range of futures, one scenario, not a certainty. Warmer air means warmer, more stratified water and more evaporation.
The reading
What the figures mean together, what to do first, how to check it, and what only the water itself can answer.
Findings
- Opportunity
Protected land sits beside this water.
An adjacent reserve is a partner on the shore and a baseline to compare against.
Reserva de la Biósfera Caribe Mexicano within about 3 km. · medium confidence
- Opportunity
A living fringe still filters this shore.
Wetland and mangrove on the edge are the water's own treatment plant — they hold sediment, take up nutrients and buffer the surge.
50% of the 300 m shore ring is wetland or mangrove (49% mangrove) (ESA WorldCover 2021). · high confidence
- Opportunity
The water reads clear from orbit.
Clear water is the rarest condition to keep and the cheapest to lose; it says the catchment above is still holding its soil.
Turbidity index -0.5, chlorophyll index -0 over 2,475 water pixels. · medium confidence
- Permanence
This water has stayed, year after year, for four decades.
Permanence is the first property of a water asset: what stays can be planned around; what comes and goes must be designed for.
97% permanent, 1% seasonal; where water was seen it was present 96% of the time (JRC Global Surface Water, Landsat 1984–2021). · high confidence
- Clarity
98% of the boundary read as open water on the latest clear pass.
The share of the drawn boundary the scene classifies as water says whether the reading is about the water or about its edge.
Sentinel-2 scene classification, 2026-09-02; turbidity clear, chlorophyll low. · medium confidence
- Climate
The surface of the water read 32.9 °C on the latest clear thermal pass.
Warm water holds less oxygen and feeds algae; above thirty degrees the fish and the bloom both notice.
Landsat Collection 2 surface temperature, 2026-09-04; a skin reading from orbit, warmer than the water a metre down. · medium confidence
- The shore
The shore is mostly natural cover.
The edge decides what reaches the water: a wooded or wetland shore filters runoff; a built or cropped shore delivers it.
300 m ring: Mangroves 49% · Tree cover 27% · Grassland 11% · Built-up 8% (ESA WorldCover 2021, land pixels only). · high confidence
- Life
This water is well recorded by naturalists.
Occurrence counts measure where people have looked as much as what lives here; a thin record is an unknown, not an absence.
1,622 GBIF occurrence records inside the boundary; most recorded: Pelecanus occidentalis, Thalasseus maximus, Fregata magnificens. · medium confidence
- Climate
Expect the seasons here about 1 °C warmer by 2050, with 28% less rain.
Warmer air means warmer, more stratified water and more evaporation; less rain means less inflow. Expect is the honest verb: this is the middle of a range.
CMIP6 (MPI-ESM1-2-XR, SSP5-8.5) 2045–2049 against the 2004–2024 record; longest dry spell expected 25 days. · medium confidence
- Pressure
The human edge of this water, at a glance.
Roads, towns, harbours and works are the pressure the water lives under; each is also a party to any plan for it.
A main road 0.5 km away (OpenStreetMap). · medium confidence
- The body
This stretch of sea reads as marine stretch of sea.
Kind and salinity set the whole frame: a reservoir has an operator, an estuary has a tide, a lake has a catchment that is its fate.
98% open water, 0% wetland, 0% mangrove, the coastline runs through the boundary (OpenStreetMap; ESA WorldCover 2021). · low confidence
- The basin
This water sits at sea level, too shallow for the global grid to give it a depth.
A shelf, a gulf or an estuary shallower than a couple of metres mixes with the wind and the tide and warms fast; the chart, not the satellite, holds its depth.
AWS Terrarium z12 (ETOPO1 below sea level), 56 samples, 1 m of relief across them. Bathymetry is ETOPO1-grade (~1.8 km): a screen, never a chart. · low confidence
What it means together
About 1,258 mm of rain falls on this water in a year, and the water stays: most of the boundary has held water through four decades of passes.
The shore is 92% natural cover, so what reaches the water is filtered first — and the water reads clear, which says the edge is doing its job.
This stretch of sea is living water whose work is protection, not repair; the weakest reading is climate resilience, and that is where the leverage is.
What to do first
- 1
Read the tide and the storm line before siting anything on the shore.
This stretch of sea is marine water; its edge moves twice a day and further in a storm.
On the water · The local tide table for spring range; the highest wrack line on the shore; the coastal-flood screen for the division. · first month
- 2
Confirm the protected boundary and its rules with the managing authority.
Protection is a legal regime and a partner; the map shows the outline, the authority holds the conditions.
On the water · The gazetted boundary and management plan from the authority; a meeting with the area's manager. · before any offer
- 3
Take a baseline now, while the water is what it is.
Every figure here is read from orbit or the public record; a baseline on the water is what makes the next reading a trend.
On the water · Temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH and conductivity at the surface and one metre down; Secchi depth; one bottle for E. coli. Same three points every time. · first visit
Open questions
- —Who holds rights to this water — to take from it, to discharge to it, to fish it — and who enforces them?
- —What is in the sediment on the bottom — the memory of everything the catchment has sent down?
- —What is the land above doing this year that the satellite has not caught up with yet?
- —How far up the shore does the highest tide of the year reach, and how far did the last storm?
Sources & method
Mexico was read from public satellite and open-data records; the sources are named below with their licence and grain. The weights that turn them into the Water Score are not published — the data is public, the lens is the product.
- Place — OpenStreetMap / Nominatim · Nominatim reverse geocodesettlement · live · ODbL 1.0
- Climate — Open-Meteo · Archive 2004–2024 + MPI-ESM1-2-XR to 2050~9 km · 2004–2024 / 2045–2049 · CC-BY 4.0 (data); non-commercial API tier
- Surface water — JRC Global Surface Water · Global Surface Water v1.4 — occurrence & seasonality30 m · 1984–2021 · Copernicus / open (attribution)
- Biodiversity — GBIF · Occurrence records (count + top species)point · live · Mixed CC0 / CC-BY / CC-BY-NC (per dataset)
- Water bodies, works & shore uses — OpenStreetMap · Overpass (natural=water, waterways, coastline, dams/weirs, harbours, industry, aquaculture, outfalls, roads, places, protected areas)vector · live · ODbL 1.0
- Body & shore cover — ESA WorldCover · WorldCover 2021 v200 inside the boundary and in a 300 m shore ring10 m · 2021 · CC-BY 4.0 (commercial promotion: notify due@esa.int)
- Basin — AWS Terrarium (Mapzen) with ETOPO1 bathymetry · Terrarium elevation tiles sampled inside the boundary~10–30 m on land; ~1.8 km below sea level · 2017 (ETOPO1: 2009) · Open (attribution)
- Water optics — Copernicus Sentinel-2 · Scene classification water mask; MNDWI, NDTI (turbidity proxy), NDCI (chlorophyll proxy) over the water pixels of one clear pass10–20 m · live (latest clear scene, ≤ 120 days) · Copernicus Sentinel data — free, full and open
- Surface temperature — Landsat Collection 2 Level-2 · Landsat C2 L2 surface temperature (ST_B10) over the boundary, latest clear scene100 m (resampled to 30 m) · live (≤ 365 days) · US public domain
- Watershed — Global Watersheds (MERIT-Hydro) · Upstream basin + downstream flowpath (screening hydrography)~90 m · MERIT-Hydro 2019 · Open service, no warranty; engine open source (delineator)
Read 2026-09-20 21:50 UTC in 10.1 s · lens v1