How to Map Your Land: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide

Whether you’ve just bought a piece of property or you’ve owned land for years, knowing exactly what you have is essential. When you map your land, you’re not just creating a pretty picture—you’re building a practical tool that helps you manage boundaries, plan improvements, track resources, and make better decisions about your property.

The good news? You don’t need to be a professional surveyor or spend thousands of dollars to create a detailed, accurate map of your property. With the right apps and a systematic approach, you can map your land yourself in a weekend or two. In this guide, I’ll walk you through the entire process using two powerful tools: Avenza Maps (a free GPS app) and SilviCultural (a forestry mapping software built specifically for landowners).

Why You Should Map Your Land

Before we dive into the how-to, let’s talk about why this matters. A good property map isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a fundamental management tool. Here’s what you gain:

Boundary clarity: You’ll know exactly where your property lines are, which prevents disputes with neighbors and helps you avoid accidentally trespassing or allowing others to encroach on your land.

Resource inventory: By marking notable features, you’ll have a clear picture of streams, springs, meadows, stands of valuable timber, wildlife habitat, and other assets on your property.

Planning capability: Whether you’re thinking about building a cabin, planning timber harvests, creating food plots, or designing trail systems, having an accurate map makes everything easier.

Long-term value: A well-documented property map increases your land’s value and makes it easier to sell if you ever decide to move on.

The process I’m about to share will give you a professional-quality map that you can use for years to come. And once you map your land the first time, updating it becomes simple.

The Tools You’ll Need

Avenza Maps (Free)

Avenza Maps is a free GPS app available for both iOS and Android. It’s been around for years and is trusted by everyone from hikers to forestry professionals. What makes Avenza special is that it works completely offline—you download your maps ahead of time, and then you can navigate and mark waypoints even without cell service.

For our purposes, Avenza serves as your GPS data collector. You’ll use it in the field to walk boundaries, mark features, and record waypoints. All that data gets saved as KML files (a standard geographic data format) that you can then import into mapping software.

SilviCultural (Paid, but Affordable)

SilviCultural is a forestry mapping platform designed specifically for woodland owners, but it’s useful for anyone who wants to map your land properly. Here’s why it’s worth the modest one-time investment:

Unlimited custom map downloads: You can create as many custom maps as you want and download them for use with Avenza in the field. This alone saves you money compared to buying individual maps or paying monthly subscriptions.

Superior imagery: SilviCultural provides high-resolution satellite imagery, so you can see your property in detail. But it goes further—you also get multi-spectral imagery, which shows your land in infrared. This is incredibly useful because different vegetation types and health conditions show up in distinct colors, making it easy to identify forest types, wetlands, open areas, and stressed vegetation.

Forest canopy height data: You can see the height of the tree canopy across your property, which helps you understand timber value and locate mature stands versus younger regeneration.

LiDAR slope data: The slope layer shows you the terrain in detail, helping you identify steep areas, gentle slopes, ridges, and valleys. This is essential for planning roads, trails, or understanding where water flows.

Multi-use tool: Beyond mapping your boundaries, SilviCultural becomes a valuable resource for hiking, hunting, and general outdoor recreation. The detailed imagery and terrain data help you navigate your property safely and effectively.

One-time payment: Unlike many mapping platforms that charge monthly or annual fees, SilviCultural currently offers a one-time payment option with unlimited use. Once you pay, you’re done—no recurring charges.

The Alternative: Google Earth

You can use Google Earth as your mapping platform instead of SilviCultural. Google Earth is free and allows you to upload the KML files from Avenza to view your boundary and waypoints. However, there are significant limitations:

• You can’t create custom maps in Google Earth to download and use with Avenza in the field
• The imagery is more limited (no multi-spectral, no LiDAR, no canopy height)
• You don’t get the specialized forestry and land management tools

If you’re on a tight budget and just want a basic map, Google Earth works. But if you want to seriously map your land and have a professional-grade tool at your disposal, SilviCultural is the better choice.

Step 1: Download and Set Up Avenza Maps

First things first: get Avenza Maps on your smartphone. Visit the App Store (iOS) or Google Play (Android), search for “Avenza Maps,” and install it. The app is free, though they offer a premium version with extra features you won’t need for basic land mapping.

Open the app and familiarize yourself with the interface. The main screen shows a map view with your current GPS location. At the bottom, you’ll see tools for adding placemarks (waypoints), creating tracks, and importing maps.

Before you head into the field, you’ll want to download a basemap to use with Avenza. If you’re using SilviCultural, you can create a custom map of your property and download it as a GeoTIFF to use as the basemap. If you’re starting without SilviCultural, Avenza has a store where you can sometimes find free USGS topographic maps for your area, though coverage varies.

Step 2: Understand Your Boundaries

Before you can map your land, you need to know where your boundaries are. This sounds obvious, but it’s often the trickiest part of the whole process. Here’s a hierarchy of approaches, from best to worst:

Find Your Corner Monuments

The gold standard is locating your property corner monuments. These are physical markers—often iron pins, stone piles, or blazed trees—that were placed by a surveyor when the property was originally divided. They mark the exact corners of your parcel.

Your deed should contain a legal description that references these monuments. It might say something like “beginning at an iron pin at the southeast corner of the property, thence N 45° E for 1,250 feet to an iron pin…” and so on. These descriptions are your roadmap.

Corner monuments can be surprisingly hard to find, especially if they were placed decades ago. Bring a metal detector if you’re looking for iron pins. Look for survey flagging or old blazes on trees. Walk slowly and methodically—it’s easy to walk right past a monument hidden under leaves or brush.

Use Deed Descriptions and Tax Maps

If you can’t find monuments, your next best option is to use your deed description along with tax maps or county GIS data. Many counties now have online GIS systems where you can view parcel boundaries overlaid on aerial imagery. While these aren’t legally definitive, they’re usually accurate enough for creating a working map of your property.

Download or screenshot the parcel boundary from the county GIS system, and use it as a reference while walking your property. Try to match the boundary shown on the tax map with features on the ground—roads, streams, stone walls, fence lines, etc.

Hire a Professional Surveyor

If your boundaries are unclear and you can’t figure them out from deed descriptions or tax maps, you might need to hire a licensed surveyor. This isn’t cheap—surveys often cost several thousand dollars—but it’s sometimes necessary, especially if:

• Your deed description is vague or contradicts physical features
• There’s a boundary dispute with a neighbor
• You’re planning significant improvements and need legal certainty
• The property is oddly shaped or has complex history

For the purposes of creating a working map, though, you often don’t need perfect legal accuracy. If you’re off by 20 or 30 feet in some places, that’s usually fine for general property management. Just understand that your map won’t be legally definitive.

Make an Educated Guess

Worst case scenario: you don’t have clear monuments, your deed is vague, and you can’t afford a surveyor right now. In this situation, you can make an educated guess at your boundaries based on whatever information you have—tax maps, old fence lines, obvious features, conversations with neighbors, etc.

Just be clear in your own mind that this is a working approximation, not a legal boundary. Don’t use it to make decisions about property lines with neighbors, and plan to get it properly surveyed eventually if boundary issues come up.

Step 3: Walk Your Boundary

Now comes the fun part: getting out in the field. The most important thing you can do when you map your land is to walk your entire boundary line. This serves multiple purposes:

• You’ll know exactly where your property starts and stops
• You’ll get a feel for the perimeter and how it relates to features on the ground
• You’ll spot issues like encroachments, damage, or maintenance needs
• You’ll collect accurate GPS data of your boundary line

How to Track Your Boundary in Avenza

Open Avenza Maps and make sure your GPS is locked on. You should see your blue position dot on the screen. Zoom in so you can see detail.

Find your first property corner (or your best estimate of where it is). At that corner, create a placemark by tapping the placemark tool and dropping a pin at your location. Name it something clear like “SE Corner” or “Corner 1.”

Now start walking your boundary line. In Avenza, start a new track by tapping the track tool (it looks like a line). As you walk, Avenza will automatically record your GPS path. Walk slowly and deliberately along the boundary, keeping an eye on the app to make sure it’s tracking you accurately.

Every time you reach a corner, create a new placemark to mark it. This way, you’ll have both a continuous boundary line (the track) and specific corner points (the placemarks).

As you walk, pay attention to features along or near the boundary—especially streams, springs, wetlands, roads, fence lines, stone walls, and other permanent landmarks. These will be important reference points.

Tips for Accurate GPS Data

GPS accuracy can vary depending on conditions. Here are some tips for getting the best data:

• Walk on a clear day if possible—heavy tree cover and weather can degrade GPS signal
• Hold your phone up and away from your body for better satellite reception
• Walk slowly and pause occasionally to let the GPS settle if it seems jumpy
• If you’re using a map in Avenza, zoom in to see how closely your track follows expected lines
• If you reach a corner but your GPS seems off by 20-30 feet, that’s normal—consumer GPS is typically accurate to within 15-30 feet

Don’t stress about perfect accuracy. You’re creating a practical working map, not a legal survey.

Step 4: Map Notable Interior Features

Once you’ve walked your boundary, it’s time to head back into the interior of your property and map your land’s notable features. This is where your map becomes truly useful for management and planning.

What Features Should You Map?

Think about what matters for how you want to use your property. Common features to map include:

Water features: Streams, springs, ponds, wetlands, seeps, seasonal drainages. Water is one of the most important resources on any property, and knowing exactly where it is helps with planning everything from trails to timber harvests to wildlife management.

Structures: Any buildings, sheds, cabins, ruins, old foundations, wells, or other human-made structures.

Access points: Gates, road entrances, trail junctions, parking areas.

Valuable resources: Individual large trees, patches of valuable timber, medicinal plant locations, nut-producing trees, berry patches, etc.

Ecological features: Unique habitats, den trees, nesting sites, rare plant communities, rock outcrops, caves.

Infrastructure: Old logging roads, fence lines, stone walls, power lines, buried utilities.

Problem areas: Invasive species patches, erosion sites, dumping areas, trespass points.

You don’t need to map every single tree or rock. Focus on features that are either permanent landmarks, valuable resources, or relevant to your management goals.

Using Avenza to Collect Feature Data

As you walk through your property identifying features, use Avenza’s placemark tool to drop a pin at each location. Give each placemark a clear, descriptive name: “Spring – west ridge,” “Old apple tree,” “Stone foundation,” “Brook crossing,” etc.

You can also add notes to each placemark with additional details: “Approximate 2′ diameter oak,” “Foundation measures roughly 20×30 feet,” “Brook flows north.”

For linear features like streams or old roads, use Avenza’s track tool to trace them as you walk along them.

For areas rather than points—like a wetland or a large patch of invasive plants—you can walk the perimeter and create a polygon in Avenza (if your version supports it), or just mark several points around the edges and connect them later in SilviCultural.

Take your time with this process. You might need multiple field sessions to thoroughly map your land, especially if you have a larger property or thick vegetation that makes walking difficult.

Step 5: Import Your Data into SilviCultural

After you’ve collected all your GPS data in Avenza, it’s time to bring it into SilviCultural to create your finished map. This is where everything comes together.

Exporting from Avenza

In Avenza Maps, open your map and tap on the menu. Look for the option to export or share your data. You’ll want to export your placemarks and tracks as a KML file. Avenza will let you email the KML file to yourself or save it to cloud storage like Google Drive or Dropbox.

Once you have the KML file on your computer, you’re ready to import it into SilviCultural.

Importing into SilviCultural and Creating Your Map

Log into SilviCultural and navigate to your property. If you haven’t set up your property yet, you’ll need to do that first—there’s a straightforward process for adding a new property by drawing a rough boundary or uploading coordinates.

Once you’re looking at your property in SilviCultural, you’ll see options to import data. Upload your KML file from Avenza. SilviCultural will process it and display all your placemarks and tracks on the map.

Now you can refine your map. Here’s where the power of SilviCultural really shines:

Clean up your boundary: Your GPS track from walking the boundary probably has some wobbles and imperfections. Use SilviCultural’s polygon tools to create a clean boundary polygon that follows your GPS track but smooths out the noise. You can snap to your corner placemarks to make sure the polygon is accurate.

Organize your features: Look at all the placemarks you created in the field. You can edit their names, add more detailed descriptions, or organize them into categories (water features, structures, trees, etc.).

Create polygons for areas: If you marked the corners of a wetland or the edges of an invasive species patch, you can now create polygon features that show the shape and extent of these areas.

Add layers: Toggle through SilviCultural’s different imagery and data layers to see your property in new ways. The multi-spectral imagery might reveal features you didn’t notice on the ground. The canopy height layer shows you where your tallest timber is. The slope layer helps you understand drainage patterns and identify gentle areas for building versus steep areas to avoid.

If you need help learning how to use SilviCultural’s tools, they have tutorial videos that walk through the process step-by-step.

Creating Custom Maps for Field Use

One of the best features of SilviCultural is the ability to create custom maps and download them back into Avenza for field use. Maybe you want to create a map showing just your boundary and water features. Or a map highlighting trails and hunting stand locations. Or a timber cruise map with your inventory plots marked.

Create as many custom maps as you want—there’s no limit. Download them, load them into Avenza, and you have offline GPS navigation for any purpose. This is incredibly useful when you’re working in the field without cell service.

Step 6: Use and Update Your Map

Congratulations! You’ve now successfully mapped your land. But a good map isn’t a one-time project—it’s a living document that evolves with your property.

Practical Uses for Your Map

Now that you have a detailed, accurate map, put it to work:

Planning projects: Use your map to plan trails, food plots, timber harvests, or building sites. You can measure distances, calculate areas, and see how proposed projects fit with existing features.

Monitoring changes: Keep track of changes on your property over time. Mark new blowdowns, erosion sites, or wildlife activity. Document the spread of invasive species or the success of plantings.

Communication: Share your map with foresters, contractors, hunting buddies, or family members. A good map makes it easy to explain where things are and what you want done.

Record keeping: Use your map as a base layer for other records. Where did you cut firewood? Where did you plant seedlings? Where did you see that big buck during hunting season? Add it all to your map.

Emergency reference: If there’s ever a fire, medical emergency, or law enforcement situation on your property, having a detailed map can be crucial for guiding responders to the right location.

Keeping Your Map Current

Plan to update your map periodically. Every year or two, take a fresh walk around your property with Avenza and note any changes. Have boundaries shifted? Have new features appeared? Have old features disappeared?

Import your new GPS data into SilviCultural and update your map accordingly. The more you use your map and keep it current, the more valuable it becomes.

Advanced Mapping Techniques

Once you’ve mastered the basics of how to map your land, you might want to explore more advanced techniques:

Measure and mark timber stands: Walk through different forest types on your property and use Avenza to create polygons for each stand. Note the dominant tree species, approximate size class, and density. This creates a basic forest inventory map.

Grid cruising: For a more detailed timber inventory, establish a grid of cruise points across your property and use Avenza to navigate to each point. At each point, take measurements of trees. This gives you statistical data on your timber volume and value.

Photo documentation: Avenza lets you attach photos to placemarks. Use this feature to document features visually—take a photo of that big oak tree, that spring, that erosion site. Photos are invaluable for tracking changes and remembering exactly what you saw.

Trail networks: As you develop trails on your property, map them with Avenza and add them to your SilviCultural map. Include notes about trail conditions, difficulty level, and seasonal access.

Wildlife observations: Map deer rubs, turkey roosts, bear scat, or other wildlife sign. Over time, patterns emerge that help you understand how animals use your property.

Conclusion

Learning to map your land is one of the most empowering things you can do as a landowner. It transforms your property from an abstract legal description into a concrete, knowable place. With Avenza Maps and SilviCultural, you have professional-grade tools that are both affordable and accessible.

The process I’ve outlined here—walk your boundary, mark notable features, import everything into mapping software, and create a finished map—works for properties of any size, from a few acres to hundreds of acres. It takes some time and effort, especially on your first attempt, but the result is a valuable tool you’ll use for years.

Start this weekend. Download Avenza, sign up for SilviCultural, and head out to your property. Walk those boundaries. Drop some pins. See your land through new eyes. You’ll be amazed at what you discover and how much more connected you feel to your property once you’ve truly mapped it.