Plot Geolocation and Polygons for Wood and Timber Under EUDR

Updated 2026-11-02 · 4 min read · By the akar.earth specialist team

EUDR geolocation for wood and timber: mapping concession cutting blocks, plantation compartments and community woodlots in Indonesia, and linking logs to plots.

For wood under the EUDR, geolocation means the plots of land where the trees were harvested: polygons for harvest areas over 4 hectares, such as concession cutting blocks and plantation compartments, and at least a point for smaller plots such as many community woodlots. Indonesian forest companies already hold block and compartment maps; the work is converting them, linking them to log deliveries, and mapping the thousands of small woodlots behind community timber.

Harvest areas by source

Concessions and plantations

Concession data is usually good but built for forest planning. Common issues:

• Local coordinate systems. Convert from UTM or national grids to WGS84 for submission.
• Plan versus actual. Planned cutting blocks may differ from what was actually harvested. Use actual harvest records where possible.
• Plantation history. For each compartment, record when it was first established. This is critical for the degradation test: a compartment established on natural forest after 2020 is non-compliant.
• Multiple compartments per batch. Pulp mills and sawmills receive logs from many compartments. Link each delivery to its compartment.

Community woodlots

Java’s community forests are made up of small private woodlots, often under 1 hectare, mixed with crops around villages. Fast-growing species such as sengon and jabon, and longer-rotation teak and mahogany, are sold standing to log traders who fell, transport and sell to sawmills and plywood mills.

Mapping approach:

1. Work through traders and mills. Mills know their main traders; traders know the villages and farmers.
2. Register the woodlot owner with consent and land document details (often SHM on private land).
3. Map the woodlot as a polygon where possible. Small woodlots under 4 hectares can legally use a point, but area helps check that log volumes are plausible.
4. Record species and planting year, which supports both the deforestation test and future carbon or harvest planning.
5. Link harvests to woodlot IDs on transport and receipt documents.

Mature teak or mahogany canopy degrades phone GPS. RTK GNSS or digitising on drone imagery works better. See drone photogrammetry and RTK GNSS plot mapping.

Trees outside forests

Furniture makers in Jepara and other centres use timber from many sources, including trees from home gardens, roadsides and farms. If the product is in Annex I, these sources also need geolocation. Record the plot where the tree grew.

Linking geolocation to products

Timber changes form many times: logs to sawnwood, veneer, plywood, furniture parts. Each step must keep the link to harvest areas:

• Log batches tagged with block, compartment or woodlot IDs.
• Mill input records linking logs to production batches.
• Production records linking batches to export lots.

Indonesia’s timber administration and SVLK documents already track volumes through this chain. Adding harvest area IDs to the same records is the most efficient route.

Data checks before export

• WGS84 coordinates with six or more decimals.
• Valid polygons for all harvest areas over 4 hectares.
• Compartment establishment dates recorded.
• Overlays with protected areas and forest estate categories.
• Duplicates removed where woodlots sell to several traders.

Our AKAR Mapper supports both field mapping and digitising, with geometry checks at capture. General rules are in polygon requirements.

Accuracy and scale

Concession and plantation maps are usually drawn at a planning scale, with boundaries that may be off by tens of metres. For EUDR screening, that is generally acceptable for large blocks, because the deforestation and degradation tests look at the whole harvest area. Where blocks border natural forest, protected areas or community land, check boundaries against recent imagery and correct them, because a small offset can move a boundary into forest that was never harvested.

For community woodlots, the opposite applies. Plots are small, so positional error matters more. A point placed 30 metres off can land in a neighbour’s rice field or in a patch of remnant forest. Take points in the centre of the woodlot, average readings, and use polygons where trees are dense. See ground truth vs satellite.

Next steps

See wood smallholders for community forest engagement and the EUDR hub for the full topic map. For a mapping campaign across a mill’s supply base, see our field data campaigns or message us on WhatsApp.