nature science history

Cool Infographic Shows How Earth’s Surface Is Divided Up

A cool attempt at visualizing countries by share of Earth’s surface by the Visual Capitalist. The infographic primarily relies on the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) to rank the world’s countries by their share of Earth’s surface. (Click to enlarge)

earth surface infographic 2


Out of 510 million square kilometers of area on the surface of Earth, less than 30% is covered by land. The largest countries occupying that land are Russia (3.35%), Canada (1.96%), and China (1.88%). Together, they account for roughly 7.2% of Earth’s surface. Russia is so big that even if we divided the country between its Asian and European sections, each of the two parts would still be the largest in their respective continents.

At the same time, Europe (excluding Russia and Greenland) only makes up 1.2% of Earth’s surface.

The rest is water, in the form of vast oceans.

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Written by Tamás Varga
A sociologist and English major by degree, I've worked in the area of civil society & human rights and have been blogging in the fields of travel, nature & science for over 20 years.
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