About the Equal Earth Project

1. Why We Built EqualEarthMap.in

For centuries, the world has viewed global geography primarily through conformal navigational projections like the 1569 Mercator map. While Mercator was a genius invention for maritime compass navigation, it severely distorts landmasses as you approach the poles—inflating regions like Greenland, North America, and Europe while dramatically shrinking equatorial continents like Africa and South America.

This projection bias has shaped public perception for generations. When people see standard world maps, they naturally assume that the visual size of a nation on the page corresponds to its actual physical land area.

EqualEarthMap.in was created to solve this challenge by providing a blazing-fast, interactive 2D and 3D web platform where students, teachers, researchers, and cartographers can explore real country and continent surface areas with 100% mathematical equal-area fidelity.

2. The 2018 Breakthrough: Equal Earth Projection

The Equal Earth map projection was developed in 2018 by cartographers Bojan Šavrič (Environmental Systems Research Institute), Bernhard Jenny (Monash University), and Tom Patterson (US National Park Service, retired).

It was published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Geographical Information Science in response to a major debate in geography education. In 2017, the Boston Public School district adopted the Gall-Peters projection to eliminate Mercator's size exaggeration. However, Gall-Peters suffered from severe angular distortion, stretching tropical landmasses vertically into elongated shapes.

Šavrič, Jenny, and Patterson asked: "Can we create an equal-area map projection that preserves exact proportional areas while maintaining the natural, aesthetically pleasing continental shapes of the Robinson projection?"

The result was Equal Earth—now widely adopted by NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the United Nations Geospatial Information Section, and world atlas publishers.

3. Mathematical Characteristics & Formula

Equal Earth is an equal-area pseudocylindrical projection defined by polynomial equations. Its key mathematical traits include:

• Strict Equivalence (Equal-Area): 1 square centimeter anywhere on the map represents the exact same surface area on Earth.
• Straight Parallels of Latitude: Parallels remain horizontal lines, enabling intuitive latitudinal and climatic comparisons.
• Smoothly Curved Meridians: Meridians curve gently toward the poles, emulating the curvature of a physical sphere.
• Balanced Pole Lines: The poles are rendered as pleasing horizontal arcs rather than harsh points or infinite lines.
• Polynomial Coefficients: Formulated using four parametric constants: A₁ = 1.340264, A₂ = -0.081106, A₃ = 0.000893, and A₄ = 0.003796, with standard parallels at 44°45′N and 44°45′S.

4. Authoritative Geographic Datasets & Methodology

Our interactive maps, country profiles, and comparative analytics are compiled from verified, authoritative geographic and cartographic sources:

• Natural Earth Public Domain Data: Boundary vector coordinates and geographic polygons curated by the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS).
• United Nations Geospatial Information Section (UN-GIS): Official international border delineations and sovereign territory registries.
• United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA): Demographic estimates and territorial surface area figures.
• USGS (United States Geological Survey): Geodetic ellipsoids (WGS84) for surface area and spherical trigonometry computations.

5. Editorial Standards & Geographic Integrity

EqualEarthMap.in is committed to editorial neutrality, educational accuracy, and cartographic clarity. We continuously review feedback from educators, students, and cartographers. All feedback, boundary inquiries, or academic suggestions are reviewed by our team.