Total and land area of Latvia

Survey method and data source

Estimate of the total area is made based on the territorial divisional spatial data acquired from the State Address Register of the State Land Service.

Land areas are estimated by deducting areas of waterbeds (calculated based on the topographic map in scale 1:10 000 (3^rd cycle data on the time period 2009–2016 (data of the layer hidro_a) managed by the Latvian Geospatial Information Agency) from the total area. Polygons of the waterbeds in map sheets not exceeding 0.1 ha are not taken into account. Coastline of the sea is based on the boundary of the territorial units; maritime area of the topographic map is included among the inland waters.

The area of hierarchically higher territorial units is obtained by summing areas of hierarchically lower territorial units. The difference between the total area of Latvia and that obtained by summing up units of a hierarchically lower territorial division is insignificant (the last one at the beginning of 2010 is by 10 m² smaller).

Area of protected natural areas is calculated based on the data on specially protected natural areas published by the Nature Conservation Agency. Territory of the North Vidzeme Biosphere Reserve outside nature reserves and nature parks, as well as marine protected areas are excluded.

To ensure that the areas are comparable with those of other European countries, the estimates were made in ETRS89/ETRS-LAEA (EPSG:3035) projected coordinate system preserving areas. Differences between the results acquired by using this system and the areas acquired in ETRS89 (EPS:4258) geographical coordinate system are insignificant (total territory of Latvia at the beginning of 2020 was 106 m² wider).

Data revision

The areas published prior based on the State Land Service data, including land reports, do not meet the actual situation, as were estimated in LKS-92 (EPSG:3059) projected coordinate system without taking into account scale factor. At the beginning of 2020, the total area of Latvia is 23.8 km² wider than that estimated with LKS-92 coordinate system without using scale factor.

Classification

Data calculated by using Classification of Administrative Territories and Territorial Units of the Republic of Latvia.

Contact person on methodology