Water · Carbon · Energy · Emissions Intelligence · Indus Basin

Capital is limited. Problems are not.

Every degraded landscape contains the map of its own recovery. In Pakistan, climate change couples water, carbon, energy, and air through the same landforms. LandIQ reads that map and shows which valley, delta, or foothill to start with.

Ten coupled layers across Pakistan's landscape, synthesised into one decision-grade map. We rank the specific places where one action moves many layers at once.

Talk to us See the science ↓

10

Intelligence layers, one convergence map

3

Domains · water · carbon · energy

1

Diagnostic · where to act, staked on reputation

Indus Basin · Layer View
LIVE
Convergence Where all five layers point to the same coordinates. That is where one action compounds into five outcomes. That is the site.
Published research · 45-year ERA5 record · Active in Pakistan · Spain · Portugal · Jordan · Colombia · Preprints pending review
What Becomes Possible

Climate risk platforms see damage. LandIQ sees the restoration opportunity inside it.

When pressures converge in the same landscape, interventions stop being scattered — they start compounding. The engine produces this at two scales: atmospheric (Example 1 · Salt Range bypass, 45 years of ERA5) and district (Example 2 · Matiari, worked end-to-end). Four products deliver it (see Pricing).

01See the mechanism
02Site the intervention
03Compound the outcome

Every project lands at the right site

No more guesswork. No more picking sites by availability or politics. When you can see where multiple pressures and opportunities overlap, every dollar, every tree, every tonne of biochar goes exactly where it does the most.

One intervention. Five outcomes.

A place with high fertilizer costs, available crop residue, and declining water tables is not three problems. It is one site where biochar cuts input costs, builds soil, and restores water. The overlap is the leverage.

Recovery travels.

The same tight coupling that lets degradation cascade through a landscape can be reversed. Restore the right site and the effects travel: downstream water quality improves, adjacent farms see moisture return, the atmospheric signal shifts.

Pakistan

Why Pakistan, first.

Pakistan is not short on data, money, or people who care. It is short on a view that shows where all of these meet. The crises are real. So is the opportunity hidden inside them.

90%

Water consumed by agriculture

Pakistan uses more water per hectare than almost any country in its income bracket. Efficiency gains in agriculture are water gains for everyone.

$2.5B

Annual fertilizer import bill

Farmers in high-input districts spend PKR 12,000-18,000/acre on synthetic fertilizer. Every rupee exposed to exchange rate risk and commodity swings.

14M

Tonnes of crop residue burned yearly

Rice straw in Sindh and Punjab. Sugarcane tops in lower Punjab. Feedstock for biochar, compost, and energy, set on fire every harvest.

33M

People displaced by the Indus floods

The same Indus floodplain that grows Pakistan's food absorbed a catastrophic flood. Recovery siting needs spatial intelligence, not guesswork.

The Layers

Ten questions. One answer.

Each layer is a spatial question with a spatial answer. Water. Carbon. Energy. Plus seven coupled inputs. Select one to read what that answer looks like, per district, per season.

Intelligence Layers
01
Geophysical
02
Water
03
Biosphere
04
Farming
05
Feedstock
06
Livestock
07
People
08
Energy
09
Carbon
10
Convergence
LAYER 06 · CONVERGENCE

The hinge, not the whole basin.

Where do all seven answers point to the same coordinates?

One action. Five outcomes. It is a spatial operation, not a metaphor. The place where water stress, farming cost, feedstock waste, livestock pressure, and community readiness overlap is the site where a single intervention compounds into systemic recovery.
7
Zones mapped
Indus
Basin focus
Example 1 · Atmospheric Mechanism

One valve. Five ridges. A cascade waiting to restart.

Between the Arabian Sea and K2, Pakistan's terrain intersects five successive condensation stages. A single atmospheric variable, the lifting condensation level, decides how many are active. Across 45 years of ERA5 reanalysis, the answer is two. The other three are not blocked by geography. They are compressed by a missing land surface. That compression can be released.

Analysis based on forthcoming LandIQ / Ali Bin Shahid ESSOAr preprint — submission in progress, DOI to follow.

Current state vs Scenario-2 restored state — side-by-side LCL bypass comparison across Pakistan
The outcome · current state vs restored cascade Left: current state. Right: Scenario 2 — an −8°C dewpoint-depression recovery applied to the same 45-year ERA5 record. The Salt Range bypass falls from 94.7% to 56.9%; the lower orographic stages rejoin the cascade. The mechanism is not a prediction. It is a lever with a measured output.
Salt Range Bypass
94.7%
Of pre-monsoon days, moisture passes above the 1,520 m ridge crest instead of condensing on it.
Indus Plains LCL · June
2,727 m
Daily-maximum lifting condensation level: 1,207 m above the Salt Range. The first three stages are aerodynamically transparent.
Restoration Lever
−55 pts
ET-driven dewpoint recovery (15.5 °C → 4.5 °C depression) lowers peak LCL to 1,358 m, cutting Salt Range bypass from 94.7% to 38.9%.

The gap between Pakistan's current water capture and its terrain-defined ceiling is the largest unrealized natural capital endowment in South Asia. Closing it is a water-security, food-security, and climate-resilience problem solved by the same intervention.

multi-decade climate reanalysis · Indus Plains domain 29–32°N, 69–73°E · LCL approximation cross-validated against Romps (2017), mean bias 3 m.
Full methodology: Biome-specific radiative forcing coefficients (Shahid 2026, Zenodo DOI) · Paper 1 pollen–light-rain (complete) · Paper C orographic ladder (working paper).
What makes LandIQ different

LandIQ is the only intelligence practice that couples atmospheric physics with district-level political economy across ten layers — water, biosphere, farming, feedstock, livestock, people, energy, carbon, terrain, and the convergence scenarios that synthesise them — all at district resolution, in one decision-grade map. We return a ranked set of sites where one well-placed action lifts production, earns exports, protects the country's water, and the atmosphere over it. Pakistan is where we start.

The same intelligence layer informs cloudburst response, watershed planning, and restoration targeting — executed through engagements we lead (see Ali’s track record).

Example 2 · District Decision · sample analysis

Matiari.
A worked analysis of what our Diagnostic tier produces.

Sample analysis — the output our Diagnostic tier produces for a specific decision. Not a delivered engagement.

A ~1,459 km² district in lower Sindh where six of the eight LandIQ layers converge. It sits on the Indus, anchors Pakistan's second-largest Nili-Ravi buffalo belt, grows cotton and sugarcane on the same soils, and burns ~140,000 tonnes of crop residue every October. A single well-placed intervention here cascades through water, livestock, farming, feedstock, and people at once.

1,459 km²Area ~850,000Population ~6.2/haBuffalo density 28 mm/dayJJA peak rainfall 72% of JJASalt Range bypass freq.
Layer convergence at Matiari · pixel score
WaterSalinity ingress, degraded canal command, shallow aquifer stress0.84
FarmingCotton + sugarcane + wheat rotation on same parcels0.79
LivestockMatiari leads Sindh buffalo density · ~5.3M L milk/day0.91
FeedstockOctober rice-cotton burn season + dairy waste concentrated0.76
PeopleHigh rural density, dense smallholder cooperatives already exist0.68
BiosphereDegraded Indus riparian corridor · restoration headroom0.81
CouplingHow many layers move when you touch this tile6 of 8
Proposed intervention

Integrated biochar + silvopasture + canal-corridor repair, sequenced across 7 pour-points.

One physical footprint does five jobs at once: diverts crop residue from burn to biochar, redirects dairy effluent from canal to compost, re-wets the root zone via canal repair, re-establishes shade and fodder via silvopasture, and rebuilds the Indus riparian corridor 2–3 km back from the channel.

  • Intervention area5,400 ha
  • Pour-points sequenced7
  • Capex (mixed capital stack)USD 4.8M
  • Operator partnerFarmer cooperative + NGO
  • Execution windowKharif 2026 → Rabi 2028
  • FinancingGrant + carbon + biogas revenue
Projected cascade · 3-year horizon

What moves when one trigger point is pulled — modelled across the five coupled layers.

Cascade projections use coupled hydrology + biomass + dairy models ground-truthed against PBS district data and Sindh Agriculture Facts & Figures 2024. Sensitivity bands reported in the full brief.

  • Buffalo water use−38%
  • Biochar produced12,000 t/yr
  • CO₂eq abated340 t/yr
  • October burn events−40%
  • Wheat yield (Y3, SOC lift)+12%
  • Milk yield (silvopasture)+8%
  • Households in year 1180+
  • Leverage vs. flat-basin approach~7×
7×
Leverage per USD vs. basin-flat spending
5
Layers moved by one intervention
180+
Households direct income uplift
340 t
CO₂eq abated per year (Y3)
Data spine · HDX OCHA admin-2 · PBS Livestock Census 2024 · Sindh Agri Facts 2024 · multi-decade climate reanalysis · Copernicus GLO-90 · ESA WorldCover 2021 · WhiteboxTools TWI Methods · Multi-layer coupling score · D8 flow accumulation · Wetness index · Polygon dissolve at admin-2 · Cartopy PlateCarrée
Who this is for

Four buyers. One convergence map that answers four different questions.

The same underlying intelligence — ten layers, district resolution, trigger-point ranking — resolves differently depending on what decision you’re defending. Here’s what LandIQ delivers to each kind of reader.

01 · Governments

Basin-scale decision support · physics that survives audit.

Your decisionWhere to sequence restoration, water, and adaptation spending across a basin — and how to defend that sequence to Cabinet, donors, and press.
What you getA convergence atlas for your jurisdiction. Trigger points ranked by leverage per rupee. Each ranked site carries its intervention, cost, and projected cascade. Defensible against audit and donor review.
EngagementAnnual Atlas subscription + seasonal refresh.
02 · Multilaterals · DFIs

Operator-partner intelligence for country compacts.

Your decisionWhich country compact, which district, which intervention to fund — and the counterfactual against which impact will be measured.
What you getCountry-level intelligence for water and climate compacts. Pre-investment diligence on site, mechanism, cascade, and failure modes. Independent from the implementer.
EngagementCountry-level engagement + per-project diligence.
03 · Project developers

Pre-MRV site intelligence for carbon + water projects.

Your decisionWhich site will hold · which will fail · which will stack credits. Where to commit capex before the first baseline survey.
What you getSite-selection intelligence. Cascade projection. Monitoring baseline. Failure-mode brief. Inputs ready for MRV methodology.
EngagementPer-site or portfolio retainer.
04 · NGOs · Foundations

Convergence maps on demand, defensible to boards.

Your decisionWhere dollar impact is highest given a theory of change — and how to carry that story past the next grant cycle.
What you getConvergence maps. Mechanism grounding. Published briefs. Defense of placement to boards and donors.
EngagementProject grant + published outputs.
How we engage

Four ways we engage. Pick the one that matches your decision.

Bespoke and Diagnostic are available today — consult-led, scope-based. Atlas and Signals are planned subscription products, launching in 2026 as LandIQ transitions from judgment firm to platform. Founding clients contact us to join early-access cohorts.

Atlas sells you the facts — subscribe to the layers you need. Signals sells you what they mean — subscribe to pre-built convergence scenarios. Bespoke builds what you specify — a one-time custom project. Diagnostic tells you where to act — a one-time premium recommendation, reputation staked. Data spine cited across all four. On Atlas and Signals the synthesis methodology is proprietary — you buy outputs, not the engine. On Bespoke, methodology + models transfer to the client. On Diagnostic, methodology is disclosed in detail under engagement but remains LandIQ IP.

01 · Atlas · subscription · PLANNED 2026

Pick the layers you need.

Per layer · per basin · per year

The raw intelligence stack. Subscribe to the layers your decision domain needs — Water alone for a canal authority, Carbon for a VCM funder, Energy for an IPP developer, or the full ten for a ministry. Quarterly refresh per layer, standing dashboard, GeoTIFF / GeoJSON delivery.

  • Modular · pick 1 to 10 layers
  • Water · Carbon · Energy each standalone
  • Institutional Belts + Corporate Assets add-on
  • Quarterly refresh + alerts per subscribed layer
  • GeoTIFF / GeoJSON / vector briefs
  • Bundle: 3+ layers −15%, full stack −25%
  • Outputs only — methodology proprietary
  • Standing satellite + public data only — no bespoke acquisition
Annual · per layer × basin
e.g. monthly Indus-basin water-quality subscription — PM2.5, arsenic, salinity, flood-risk layers refreshed with change alerts.
02 · Signals · subscription · PLANNED 2026

Subscribe to what the layers mean.

Per scenario · per basin · per year

Pre-built convergence scenarios — the synthesis Atlas can't give you. Ranked district lists per objective, quarterly refresh, event-triggered alerts (e.g., "Matiari risk score jumped Q3 2026"). Subscribe to one scenario or a bundle that matches your decision stream.

  • Water Max · Rainfall · Infiltration · ET · Recharge
  • Risk Aversion · Flood · Population · Heat · Drought
  • Carbon Max · Biochar Deploy · Afforestation · Blue
  • Saffron · high-value crop viability (one example)
  • Informal Trade Corridors · border economies
  • Quarterly refresh + event-triggered alerts
  • Ranked outputs only — synthesis logic proprietary
  • Standing satellite + public data only — no bespoke acquisition
Annual · per scenario × basin
e.g. quarterly Biochar-Deploy ranking for the Punjab cotton belt, with event alerts when SOC deficit or drought signal shifts.
03 · Bespoke · project · AVAILABLE NOW

You know what you want. We build it.

Scope-based

Custom modelling, custom dataset generation, multi-year programs, embedded team. You bring the specification; we deliver to your brief. Transferable, reproducible, yours.

  • Hydrological routing, LCA, biochar kinetics
  • Atmospheric moisture recycling models
  • Trigger-point optimisation under your constraints
  • Ongoing convergence-scenario monitoring bespoke to you
  • Embedded analytics partner on long programs
  • On-demand data acquisition: LiDAR, drone, soil sampling, acoustic, interviews — scoped in
  • Memo + model + code + dataset — all transferable, yours to reuse
Case-by-case · weeks to multi-year
e.g. LiDAR canopy scan of a foothill belt with biomass and infiltration estimates before a reforestation tender.
04 · Diagnostic · premium · AVAILABLE NOW

You give us the decision. We tell you what to do about it.

Per decision · per domain

We run the convergence synthesis weighted for your question — where water, carbon, energy, and the seven coupled inputs point to the same districts — ground-truthed at the top candidates, delivered as a signed brief: here is where to act, what it costs, what cascades out, what could go wrong, and why we'd stake our reputation on it.

  • Question-weighted full-stack convergence run
  • Top 5–10 trigger points ranked by leverage per USD
  • Field visits + LiDAR at shortlisted sites where satellite resolution is insufficient — ground-truth baked in
  • Intervention + cost + cascade brief, signed
  • Domain-specific: water / carbon / energy
  • Reputation staked on the recommendation
  • Methodology disclosed in detail · stays LandIQ IP
Decision-based · 8–16 weeks
e.g. modelled cascade of 5% forest-cover restoration on a windward slope across three monsoon seasons, with sensitivity bands, ranked against two alternative interventions.
Pay less if you want us to do what you tell us to do. Pay more if you want us to tell you. We do not publish list prices — every engagement is scoped to the client's decision, geography, and timeline. Ask for a quote and we return a written scope within 48 hours.
Leadership

Khurram Irshad

Co-founder & Chairman
Indus Climate Fund · Irshad Foundation · Stony Brook

Entrepreneur with a thirty-year track record of executing first-of-kind projects in industry and capital — from a patented textile-wastewater reuse process (PK 139309, 2007) to leadership of the Indus Climate Fund in New York, directing catalytic capital into climate technology, sustainable agriculture, biochar, and carbon markets. Trustee of the Irshad Foundation for nineteen years, financing girls’ education across rural Sindh. Stony Brook University. Anchors LandIQ’s operational scale, client relationships, and long-term direction as the practice moves from consulting to platform.

LinkedIn

Ali Bin Shahid

Co-founder & CEO
Climate & Ecosystem Repair Architect · Regenesis

Twenty years in systems engineering. A decade on coupled land–atmosphere systems. Peer-reviewed work in hydrology and thermal forcing. LandIQ is the instrument for locating where restoration carries furthest in Pakistan.

  • Peer-reviewed: In Defence of the Biotic Pump · J. Atmos. Sci. Research (2025) — foundation of the ET-feedback scenario
  • Open preprints (under review, code & data open): Amazon–Congo moisture-corridor collapse · Biome-specific radiative forcing · Surface energy partitioning → TOA · Subarctic dam boundary-layer modification · Subarctic dams as AMOC forcing — all ESSOAr (2026)
  • Head Scientist, Ten Lives Festival — Portugal & Spain (landscape restoration, water-cycle design)
  • Consultant: Green Deck (Jordan, Colombia) · HOPE (Spain)
  • Advisor: Cooling the Climate Group (Amazonas) · Ecosystem Restoration Alliance
  • Research partner with Olivia Lazard (Carnegie) — paper forthcoming
ORCID Regenesis LinkedIn
Belief

Every degraded landscape contains the map of its own recovery. The coupling that drove collapse is the same coupling that carries restoration. The question was never whether recovery is possible. It was always: where do you start?

Featured

Featured on Investing in Regenerative Agriculture as "one of the few who can model and calculate water cycle restoration."

Schedule

Consulting now. Platform in 2027.

Today, each engagement is bespoke. The pipeline that backs them becomes a product once the pipeline is proven.

Now

Consulting & Project Analysis

Spatial intelligence assembled per-project. Satellite-based analysis, convergence reports, strategic plans, and advisory engagements across water, agriculture, and restoration.

Next · Late 2026

Data Pipeline

Automated ingestion from satellite, government, and field sources. Convergence scoring validated against live deployment outcomes. Bioacoustic biodiversity layer in development.

Horizon · 2027

SaaS Platform

Self-serve access. Query any district. Export convergence reports. API for MRV integration, carbon registries, and project developers.

Data & Methodology

Among others — a snapshot of the public datasets we use.

The engine runs on ~20 open-source datasets, a selection of which is listed here — alongside proprietary sources, field-collected Pakistan data, methodology, and weightings developed in-house. Exhaustive data lineage + methodology are disclosed under engagement. Weighted-sum composites, threshold selections, field-calibration records, and in-country primary research are not published here.

Climate + Hydrology
  • Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis
  • Copernicus GLO-90 DEM
  • MERIT Hydro
  • GPM-IMERG / CHIRPS precipitation
  • GRACE-FO aquifer anomalies
  • SMAP soil moisture
  • WaPOR evapotranspiration
  • … among others
Land + Ecosystem
  • ESA WorldCover 2021
  • ESA CCI Biomass
  • public soil database
  • Global Mangrove Watch (GMW)
  • MODIS land cover + NDVI
  • Hansen Global Forest Change
  • VIIRS active fires
  • … among others
Population + Social
  • WorldPop 2020 1 km
  • PBS 2023 Digital Census
  • PBS Livestock Census 2024
  • PSLM / HIES
  • OCHA Pakistan admin-2
  • OpenStreetMap
  • VIIRS night-time lights
  • … among others
Sectoral + Proprietary
  • LandIQ’s prior peer-reviewed research
  • Field-collected Pakistan primary data
  • Proprietary multi-criteria weightings
  • Voluntary carbon registries (Verra, Gold Standard, &c.)
  • Energy & industrial asset inventory
  • Institutional + commercial geography (curated)
  • Informal-trade + border-economy synthesis
  • Unpublished field-calibration + ground-truth records
  • … disclosed under engagement
LandIQ primary research — Ali Bin Shahid (ORCID 0009-0003-9709-4241): process-based, first-principles work on land–atmosphere coupling that underpins the engine’s methodology. All code, data, and methodology open-source on GitHub — reproducibility is the standard.

Peer-reviewed:
· (2025) In Defence of the Biotic Pump. Journal of Atmospheric Science Research. DOI — foundation of the ET-feedback scenario on this site.

Open preprints (ESSOAr · under review · code + data open on GitHub):
· Collapse of the moisture corridors that sustain inland rainfall in the Amazon and Congo (2026). DOI
· Biome-specific radiative forcing coefficients reveal ecosystems as active climate regulators (2026). DOI
· Does biome-specific surface energy partitioning propagate to the top of atmosphere? (2026). DOI
· Observational detection of persistent boundary-layer modification by subarctic hydroelectric dam discharge (2026). DOI
· Subarctic hydroelectric dams as an unrecognized freshwater forcing on the AMOC (2026). DOI

Cross-referenced external research: Waleed & Sajjad (2025) ML-based Pakistan flood susceptibility — DOI, used as one external cross-check against LandIQ’s process-based methodology; Cohen (1984) · Jalal (2014) · Lieven (2011) on institutional-belt geography; Woolf et al. (2010) on biochar carbon abatement; van Donkelaar et al. on satellite PM2.5; Peel et al. (2007) on Köppen climate classification; Zaigham et al. (2009) on Pakistan geothermal; Qureshi (2008) & Aslam (2016) on Pakistan salinity; International Crisis Group reports on regional political geography. Full bibliography supplied under engagement.

Image credits: Energy section background — Jhimpir Wind Farm 2012 by Muzaffar Bukhari via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0. Carbon section background — Mangrove Forest Sindh by Ayazan57 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Both cropped and color-adjusted for site use.

Every landscape has a first site. Let us find yours.

We work with organizations, governments, and investors who want their next intervention to land at the site where one action carries five outcomes.

ali@landiq.earth