TERRA

Sources

Sources and licences

Last updated 9 October 2026

Every reading is built from public satellite and open data. The data belongs to the people who publish it; what TERRA adds is the reading. Below is each source, who holds it, and the licence it is used under. Every reading also names the sources it drew on, and which of them were silent.

Some sources are read only where they apply, such as the Amazon basin or Costa Rica, or only where this deployment holds a key for them.

  1. 01Credits

    When you publish or share a reading, keep these lines with it.

    • Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data, 2015 to the present.
    • Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information (ERA5).
    • Weather and climate data by Open-Meteo.com, CC-BY 4.0.
    • Climate projections for 2050 and today's mean temperature from the World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal, https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org (CMIP6, 28 models, and the ERA5 1991–2020 normal; CC BY 4.0). We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme, which coordinated CMIP6, and the modelling groups that produced its output.
    • Rainfall from CHIRPS v3, Climate Hazards Center, UC Santa Barbara (doi:10.15780/G2JQ0P), CC BY 4.0; Funk et al. 2026, Scientific Data 13:718.
    • © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence.
    • Photographs on the Who it's for pages, cropped and colour-graded: Outward Bound Costa Rica, Julia Mayo, Elianna Gill, Vitor Monthay and Ana Lorena, Unsplash License; Neil Palmer, CIAT, CC BY-SA 2.0.
    • Plus the credit of each source a reading names, as listed below.

  2. 02Reading the land · 53 sources

  3. 03Reading the water · 5 more

    AQUA reads a body of water with the sources above that apply to it, and these of its own.

  4. 04Base maps

  5. 05The lab

    TERRA’s lab pages, such as a land’s record month by month, also draw on these.

    • Produced using Copernicus WorldDEM-30 © DLR e.V. 2010-2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014-2018 provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved.
    • © ESA WorldCover project 2020 / Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020) processed by ESA WorldCover consortium, CC-BY 4.0.
    • Earthquakes from the U.S. Geological Survey catalogue, public domain.
    • Landsat imagery courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey, public domain.
    • Climate now and around 2050: CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017, Scientific Data 4:170122; Karger et al. 2021, EnviDat, doi:10.16904/envidat.228), CC0 1.0. The future is SSP5-8.5, the mean of GFDL-ESM4, IPSL-CM6A-LR, MPI-ESM1-2-HR, MRI-ESM2-0 and UKESM1-0-LL.
    • Place names from GeoNames (geonames.org), CC BY 4.0. Maps made with Natural Earth, public domain.
    • The air over the land: fine particles hour by hour from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service global forecasts and analyses, served by Open-Meteo.com, CC BY 4.0. Generated using Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service information 2026; neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use that may be made of it. Depth of the mixing layer and wind from Open-Meteo.com, CC BY 4.0. Public sensors from Sensor.Community, Open Database Licence; readings shown as each sensor reports.
    • Bird recordings by iNaturalist observers, CC0 1.0 and CC BY 4.0; each recordist is credited beside the recording, with a link to the original. Bird species counts from GBIF.org, CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records only, accessed 6 October 2026.

  6. 06The score

    The weights that turn these readings into the Dear Wise Earth Land Score are TERRA’s own and are not published. If you hold the rights to a source and see it described wrongly here, write to connect@dearwise.earth.

Questions: connect@dearwise.earth

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TERRA by Dear Wise Earth · the land is public like a map; what you add is yours