When representatives of the Boston State School District decided to make changes to current educational geographical maps, a group of scientists from the USA and Australia came to the rescue. As a result of their joint work, a more accurate map of the world was created, which they called “Equal Earth”.
The main problem of the vast majority of geographical maps is the errors in the sizes of the objects depicted on it. The reason is that the maps are flat, and the earth is round. Therefore, cartographers have to project a complex surface onto the plane.
There are many ways to solve this problem. So, for example, a fairly common type of cards with a projection of a mercator was created, on which the poles are somewhat stretched, and equatorial ones are compressed on the contrary to fix the lines of latitude and longitude. As a result, continuity such as Africa and South America turned out to be much less than they really are, while Greenland seems huge.
Another attempt to overcome cartographic distortions is the Gall-Peters map, where the sizes of all continents are depicted as accurately as possible. However, a new problem arose with her – the continents turned out to be distorted, elongated. A map with a projection of Robinson is an attempt to find a compromise between accuracy and appearance, and partially had to sacrifice precisely accuracy.
The map with the “equal land” has the same size and contours as the projection of Robinson, but with increased size of equatorial areas. Today this is the most accurate display of our planet on the plane of the card.
Source — Newsweek