Convert UTM coordinates to WGS84 for the EUDR
Recognise UTM and national-grid coordinates, find the right zone and EPSG code, and convert them to the WGS84 degrees the EU Information System requires.
In short
- Recognise projected coordinates. Numbers in the hundreds of thousands (eastings) and up to ten million (northings) are metres in a projected system, not degrees.
- Find the system. Look for a .prj file, a note on the survey, or the software's export settings. Failing that, the zone follows from the longitude.
- Convert in the checker. Open the file in the checker and choose Convert to WGS84 degrees. If the system is not declared and more than one fits, you are asked to choose.
- Check the result on the map. Converted plots should land exactly where they are on satellite imagery. A wrong zone moves them hundreds of kilometres.
The Information System supports one coordinate system: WGS 84, with longitude and latitude in decimal degrees. Anything else "must be converted" before upload (GeoJSON File Description, Introduction). UTM is the most common thing that needs converting.
Recognising UTM
UTM divides the world into 60 zones, each 6° of longitude wide, and measures positions in
metres within the zone. A UTM coordinate looks like 458213.4, 588641.9: an easting
(roughly 160,000 to 840,000) and a northing (up to about 9,300,000 in the north; in the
southern hemisphere, counted from 10,000,000 at the equator downwards).
Two numbers that size are never degrees: degrees stop at 180.
Finding the zone and the EPSG code
The zone number is floor((longitude + 180) / 6) + 1. For WGS 84 UTM, the EPSG code is
326 followed by the zone in the northern hemisphere, and 327 followed by the zone in the
southern.
| Where | Zone | EPSG |
|---|---|---|
| Western Côte d'Ivoire | 29N | 32629 |
| Eastern Côte d'Ivoire, most of Ghana | 30N | 32630 |
| Sumatra, south of the equator (part) | 48S | 32748 |
| São Paulo state, Brazil (part) | 22S | 32722 |
National datums
Not every UTM file is WGS 84. Brazil's official datum is SIRGAS 2000 (for example
EPSG:31982, SIRGAS 2000 / UTM zone 22S); older African and Asian data may use a
colonial datum or a national grid such as EPSG:2136, Accra / Ghana National Grid.
Converting with the wrong datum can shift plots by metres to hundreds of metres, which is
why the .prj file, when present, always wins.
What the checker does
The checker detects metre coordinates from their values and uses a declared system
when there is one (a .prj, a legacy crs member in GeoJSON, or an SRID in WKT). If
there is none, it guesses only when exactly one WGS 84 UTM zone puts every plot inside
the declared country, and tells you it guessed. Otherwise it asks, listing the likely
candidates and letting you search every EPSG system by code or name.
Sources
- EUDR GeoJSON File Description (EUDR Information System help, updated 17 August 2026), Introduction, European Commission
Last verified against these sources on .