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.

Publisher
World Bank
Unit
Cadence
Annual
Series
215
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Updated
2026-09-06

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

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

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Rural land area · World Bank · Interva