Incorporating geospatial data halves chemistry-based timber harvest area predictions

Journal article, 2026

International demand for forest products is exerting increasing pressure on ecosystems, biodiversity, and carbon storage. In response, international regulatory frameworks are tightening, with many now demanding precise declarations of timber origin. Implementing such regulations will require robust methodologies for scientifically verifying claimed harvest locations of timber. Advances in chemistry-based spatial tools have dramatically improved our capacity to identify timber harvest location. Yet these tools incorporate few environmental constraints that determine whether a location is ecologically viable or operationally feasible for commercial harvesting. We explore how integrating open-access geospatial datasets of key environmental attributes—land cover, topography, and tree cover fraction—can be harnessed to improve existing models. For 323 birch samples in a ∼3.9 million km² study area in Eastern Europe, we found incorporating land-cover restrictions can halve the harvestable range within the predicted harvest area without compromising the accuracy of predictions. Almost 80% of true harvest locations were correctly identified when removing all non-forest land cover from the predicted harvest area. However, imposing high tree cover fraction thresholds substantially reduced correct predictions. These results highlight the benefits of embedding more sophisticated ecological viability and harvest feasibility data into timber harvest location determination models for strengthening the evidentiary basis for legality verification under emerging policy regimes. More broadly, they demonstrate the value of widely available environmental datasets in advancing scientifically rigorous, transparent, and enforceable methods for timber-traceability and regulatory oversight. As global deforestation continues to accelerate biodiversity loss and climate change, ensuring that timber-trade regulations are scientifically enforceable is critical.