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World Bank · Agriculture

Rural land area

Rural land area in square kilometers, derived from urban extent grids which distinguish urban and rural areas based on a combination of population counts (persons), settlement points, and the presence of Nighttime Lights. Areas are defined as urban where contiguous lighted cells from the Nighttime Lights or approximated urban extents based on buffered settlement points for which the total population is greater than 5,000 persons.

Coverage
215 of 238 countries
Latest data
2015
Series
215
Unit
sq km
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Retrieved
2026-11-05
Indicator
rural-land-area
Interva ID
worldbank-rural-land-area

Recency

stale

data to 2015; catalog to 2025

Provenance

2 steps

as the publisher declares it

Versions

1

catalog snapshots

Citation

BibTeX + CSL

versioned permalink

Quality profile

This profile describes what Interva can measure in the data. It does not claim the dataset is accurate, complete, or suitable for a particular use.

Recency

0%

Latest observation is 2015; the catalog broadly reports to 2025, so this data is 10 year(s) behind (stale).

Method: Compares the dataset's latest non-projected period with the year most datasets in the catalog end in. Up to 2 years behind is current — annual data is routinely published a year or two late — and more than 5 is stale. Measured from the data, not from when Interva last crawled it.

Temporal completeness

12%

215 of 215 series skip at least one year inside their own span; the median series reports 12% of its years.

Method: Per series, years present divided by years from its first to its last observation; the median across series is reported. Annual periods are assumed, which holds for every series in the catalog today.

Geographic coverage

Measured

Covers 215 of the 238 countries in the catalog.

Method: Counts distinct geographies with at least one observation. Not scored: a regional dataset covering its region completely is not deficient for omitting the rest of the world.

History depth

Measured

The median series has 3 observations; the earliest begins in 1990.

Method: Counts non-projected observations per series. Not scored: a long history is useful for trend work and irrelevant for a cross-section.

Revisions

Measured

No observation has been restated in any vintage Interva has recorded.

Method: Counts values the publisher changed between Interva's publishes. Not scored: revising estimates is ordinary and often a sign of care, and the count is here so a reader citing a figure knows whether it moves.

Schema conformity

Not assessed

No declared schema or validation rules are attached to this dataset yet.

Validity

Not assessed

No field-level validation rules are attached to this dataset yet.

Consistency

Not assessed

Cross-series consistency rules are not defined yet. The obvious first one — whether two publishers measuring one concept agree within a stated tolerance — is a candidate.

2 scored from the data, 3 described without a score, 3 not assessed. Pipeline integrity: all 5 checks pass. Assessed 2026-11-07.

By country

Rural land area for each of the 215 countries it covers, with the full history.

Latest observations

CountryPeriodValueUnit
Afghanistan2015636,173sq km
Albania201527,332sq km
Algeria20152.31Msq km
American Samoa2015198.25sq km
Andorra2015409.50sq km
Angola20151.25Msq km
Antigua and Barbuda2015396.33sq km
Argentina20152.74Msq km
Armenia201527,342sq km
Aruba201584.80sq km

Provenance

Who produced these figures, as World Bank declares it — not inferred, and each line says which published field it was read from.

  1. Produced by

    CIESIN, Columbia University

    Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ) Urban-Rural Population and Land Area Estimates, Version 2, Center For International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) - Columbia University, uri: https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/catalog/sedac-ciesin-sedac-lecz-urplaev2-2.00, publisher: NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), date published: 2013

    declared by worldbank in sourceOrganization

  2. Read from

    World Bank

    World Development Indicators

    declared by worldbank in source

Versions

A vintage is a dated publish of the catalog. The current entry is a catalog snapshot; checksums are not recorded yet and are shown as such.

  • CurrentCurrent catalog snapshotchecksum not recorded

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Citation

Version: catalog snapshot 2026-11-05. The record labels this as a catalog snapshot because immutable dataset releases are not stored yet.

World Bank (2026). Rural land area. Interva. https://interva.co/dataset/worldbank-rural-land-area (accessed 2026-11-07). catalog snapshot 2026-11-05.

BibTeX
@misc{interva-worldbank-rural-land-area,
  title        = {Rural land area},
  author       = {World Bank},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://interva.co/dataset/worldbank-rural-land-area}},
  note         = {Interva dataset worldbank-rural-land-area; catalog snapshot 2026-11-05},
  urldate      = {2026-11-07}
}

DOI: not assigned (not assigned). The permalink is versioned by catalog snapshot; a stable dataset DOI is a later step.

API access

Every fact on this page is available from the API.

curl https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-rural-land-area
curl -o worldbank-rural-land-area.csv https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-rural-land-area/download
curl "https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-rural-land-area/citation?accessed=YYYY-MM-DD"
curl https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/datasets/worldbank-rural-land-area/quality

Full schema: https://interva-api.nq5kq4f69b5zj.eu-west-3.cs.amazonlightsail.com/docs

Open in the terminal to chart this series, compare it against other publishers, or export it with its provenance.

Rural land area · World Bank · Interva