ABSTRACT
The Equal Earth map projection is a new equal-area pseudocylindrical projection for world maps. It is inspired by the widely used Robinson projection, but unlike the Robinson projection, retains the relative size of areas. The projection equations are simple to implement and fast to evaluate. Continental outlines are shown in a visually pleasing and balanced way.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Fritz Kessler (Pennsylvania State University) for sharing his atlas research results, Daniel “daan” Strebe (Mapthematics LLC) for the help implementing his new technique, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. For example, Monmonier (Citation2004, p. 127) found that none of the 12 atlases at his local bookstores used the Mercator projection (with the exception of a single time-zone map). As for web maps, the Mercator projection is almost exclusively used (Battersby et al. Citation2014), but these maps are not designed to visualize the entire globe.
2. Fritz C. Kessler, Pennsylvania State University, and Daniel R. Strebe, Mapthematics Inc., counted the number of projections in 11 English-language atlases and 1 Russian atlas published between 2000 and 2011. The Robinson was the most frequent projection.