
Although not a unit of SI, hectare is the only named unit of area that is accepted for use with SI units. Also note here that while acre is also widely used to measure land across the world, the hectare and the acre are different in the sense that the acre is a unit of area and hectare is a metric unit of area.Ĭounted among the most commonly used land measurement units by the farming communities across countries, both these units are used to measure large areas of land.Ī metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides, hectare is used in the measurement of land across the world. Even though the are is the primary metric unit of land measurement, the hectare has become more common. An are is equal to 100 square metres while a hectares is equal to 100 ares. It is about the size of a European football field.Ī metric unit of square measure, the term hectare is derived by adding the standard metric prefixes to the original base unit of area, the are. To give the understanding of the area a visual perspective, it would be better to equate a hectare with a football field. Consequently, a farm with 200 ha of fields has 2 square kilometers of fields. A 100 ha is equal to one square kilometre. Invented in the year 1795, the term hectare is a conjunction of the Latin words area and hect.Ī hectare is equal to 10,000 square meters and 2.471 acres in the British Imperial System. In these countries, area in real estate, architecture, and of interior spaces is often specified in terms of square footage.Hectare, a commonly used unit of the metric system that is used to measure land and plots all across the world, goes by the symbol ha. It is a measurement derived from the area of a square with a side length measured in feet.Ĭurrent use: The square foot is mainly used in the United States but is also used to some extent in countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Malaysia, Singapore, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Hong Kong. History/origin: The origin of the square foot can be seen in the term itself. One square foot equals 144 square inches.

It is defined as the area of a square with one-foot sides. Square footĭefinition: A square foot (symbol: sq ft) is a unit of area used in the imperial and US customary systems (UCS). However, area measurements are typically not accurate enough for the difference between the two acre measurements to be detectable.

The United States (US) uses both international as well as US survey acres (~4047 square meters), which vary based on which type of yard is used in the measurement. The most commonly used acre today, the international acre, is based on the international yard, which was defined in 1959.Ĭurrent use: Acres are used in countries including the United States, the UK, Ghana, India, Canada, and others. Before the metric system was adopted, many countries used their own versions of the acre. History/origin: In the Middle Ages, the acre was defined as the area that a yoke (pair) of oxen could typically plow within one day, using a wooden plow.


It is defined as the area of 1 chain (66 feet) by 1 furlong (660 feet), which is exactly equal to 1/640 of a square mile, 43,560 square feet, or exactly 4046.8564224 square meters. Definition: An acre (symbol: ac) is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems.
