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The Equal-Area-Maps.com website was created for a series of articles that were published on GeoWebGuru.com in September, and started with an introduction to Map Projections and Coordinate Systems. The articles went on to look at the correct use of map projections for online geostatistical map applications, and made a case for global equal area map projections.

Virtually all online map applications use the Mercator projection. This was invented for 16th century navigation - and it is a very good projection for marine navigation, but it is a very poor map projection when the relative sizes of different areas are important. For example, the Mercator projection makes Greenland look slightly larger than Africa, when Africa is actually many times larger. Therefore geostatistical, thematic, and distribution map applications must use equal area map projections.

This site implements a number of online, interactive maps suitable for global thematic applications.

Projections with fully implemented maps

KML or GeoRSS feeds can be plotted as overlays on the following maps:

Mollweide - elliptical pseudo-cylindrical

This is currently the recommended projection due to a combination of functionality and a lower level of shape distortion.

Sinusoidal - sinusoidal pseudo-cylindrical

Behrmann - cylindrical equal area

Projections with interactive basemaps but no overlay capability

Due to limited projection support in the Proj4JS library (and hence OpenLayers), the following world maps can be viewed, zoomed, panned, etc but the overlay capability has been disabled:

Bonne - pseudo-conic

Craster - parabolic pseudo-cylindrical

Eckert IV - elliptical pseudo-cylindrical

Eckert VI - sinusoidal pseudo-cylindrical

Hammer - azimuthal with elliptical meridians

McBryde-Thomas 4 - quartic pseudo-cylindrical