Land Area

What this measures

Land area measures a country's total land surface in square kilometers, excluding inland water like large lakes and rivers. It comes from the World Bank's land-area series and reflects internationally recognized territory.

Why it matters

Land area affects everything from a country's natural-resource base and agricultural capacity to its exposure to different climates and its logistical challenges — governing and connecting a vast, sparsely populated territory is a very different problem from governing a small, dense one.

Notable patterns

• The three largest countries by land area cover about 27% of the total land area in this dataset.
• The ten largest countries cover roughly 55% of it — land area is heavily concentrated in a small number of very large countries.
• Russia is the largest at 16,376,870 km²; Monaco is the smallest in this dataset at 2.084 km².

Methodology & sources

Square miles are calculated from the sourced km² value using the exact factor 0.3861021585424458 (1 km² = 0.386102… mi²), then rounded to the nearest whole number. No independent mi² source is consulted; both columns trace to the same World Bank series. Some small territories and disputed regions are excluded where the World Bank does not report a figure for them.