Interactive projection study
About & Data Sources – New World Map
New World Map is an independent educational project about map projections, not an official United Nations map or a claim that national borders have changed.
Map boundaries
Country geometry comes from Natural Earth’s public-domain 1:110m dataset. It depicts de facto boundaries; disputed boundaries are sensitive and can differ among authorities.
Projection math
The maps use D3’s geoMercator and geoEqualEarth implementations. Equal Earth was introduced by Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson, and Bernhard Jenny.
Area figures
Africa’s 30.37 million km² figure follows the African Union. Greenland and United States figures use United Nations Statistics data. Displayed values are rounded.
A necessary caveat
Every flat map distorts something. Equal Earth preserves relative area, not every distance, direction, or local shape. Mercator is useful for navigation but unsuitable for visual area comparison.
Primary sources and method
Map geometry uses Natural Earth 1:110m boundaries. Projection math uses D3’s spherical implementations. Area values are rounded and may vary slightly with coastline, inland-water, and boundary conventions.
- Natural Earth 1:110m country boundaries
- Equal Earth projection project
- D3 geographic projections
- United Nations Statistics area data
- African Union area reference
Published September 7, 2026 · Last reviewed September 7, 2026