Edit ground

[Soren Raymaker]

I have land that I own but the ground is under water and all rock.  Try as I might, I can not "raise" the land.  It would seem that I need to add some dirt or sand in order to raise it.  Does anyone know how to do that?

[Rolig Loon]

If you are on the Mainland estate, you cannot move the land surface up or down more than 4m from where Linden Lab designed it to be.  If you are on a private estate, you may terraform to your heart's content, but only with permission of the region owner.  No matter where you are, you can rez objects on the land surface and then build on top of them.  So, you could rez a simple flat prim if you wanted to, and then texture it to look like the region's terrain.  Even better, you could create (or buy) a mesh object that looks like a terraformed land surface and then build on it.

Read http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Terraforming

Edited September 11, 2020 by Rolig Loon
Added a link

[Lindal Kidd]

Adding to Rolig's excellent response...

The ground texture on the land does not have anything to do with how much, or how little, you can terraform it.  Every region may have up to four terrain textures, and the designer can set an elevation at which each texture begins to be used.  The region honors this elevation, but with a degree of randomness thrown in so that the textures look more natural.  So, your sea bed might be sand, with grass taking over a meter or two above sea level, and transitioning to rock at maybe 20m, and snow at 50m.

Terrain textures can be set by the owners of private estates, but LL dictates what they will be on the Mainland.

Terrain textures alone are not enough to make land look "real".  You also need to add rocks, trees, and plants.