A hectare (ha) is the area of a square 100 metres on each side, that is, 10,000 square metres. It is the unit used to measure land, farms, fields or the area burned by a wildfire. The trouble is that "10,000 m²" is a hard figure to picture, and that is why the Hectareometer exists: it draws on a real map how much any number of hectares covers, over a place you know. Drag the map above to your city and change the number of hectares to see it to scale.
A hectare is roughly the size of a city block, or a bit more than a football pitch (and about 2.47 acres). But our eyes are bad at comparing areas: the best way to grasp it is to see it drawn over somewhere you know. Use the tool above, type the number of hectares and drag the map to your neighbourhood.
| 1 hectare equals | Value |
|---|---|
| Square metres | 10,000 m² |
| Square kilometres | 0.01 km² |
| Acres | ≈ 2.47 acres |
| Ares | 100 a |
| Square side | 100 × 100 m |
| Football fields | ≈ 1.4 pitches |
About 1.4 football fields. A standard pitch measures roughly 105 × 68 metres (about 7,140 m²), that is around 0.7 hectares. The phrase "a hectare is like a football pitch" is very common in the news, but it is inaccurate: it makes areas (and wildfires) look bigger than they are. When people say "300 football fields burned down", it is really about 210 hectares, not 300.
Not just areas: we also measure, convert and draw distances, water and weights to scale.
Common quantities, ready to see drawn to scale:
Stories about hard-to-picture quantities, with the figure drawn to scale.
"An area equivalent to 300 football fields has burned down." We have all heard a sentence like that, but can we really picture how much 300 football pitches cover? One summer day I heard it on the radio and ended up reading this article (in Spanish), which explains nicely that a football pitch and a hectare are a poor analogy. I like data visualisation, so I thought about how to make the size of a wildfire easier to understand. The Hectareometer was the best I came up with.
The underlying idea is to compare by analogy: if I know something with a given property, comparing something else to it helps me understand it. Saying "it is like 8,163 football stadiums" does not help; saying "it is the size of this city" does, but only if you live there. Hence the spark: what if I could draw the area of the hectares I want to understand on top of a place I know? That is how the Hectareometer was born.