Categories:: Geospatial Functions

ST_AREA¶

Returns the area in square meters of the polygon(s) in a GEOGRAPHY object.

Syntax¶

ST_AREA( <geography_expression> )

Arguments¶

geography_expression: The argument must be of type GEOGRAPHY.

Returns¶

Returns a REAL value, which represents the area in square meters.

Usage Notes¶

If geography_expression is not a Polygon, MultiPolygon, or GeometryCollection containing polygons, ST_AREA returns 0.
If geography_expression is a GeometryCollection, ST_AREA returns the sum of the areas of the polygons in the collection.

Examples¶

This uses the ST_AREA function to calculate the area of Earth’s surface 1 degree on each side with the bottom of the area on the equator:

SELECT 
      ST_LENGTH(TO_GEOGRAPHY('LineString(0 0, 0 1)')) AS height,
      ST_LENGTH(TO_GEOGRAPHY('LineString(0 0, 1 0)')) AS width, 
      ST_LENGTH(TO_GEOGRAPHY('LineString(0 0, 0 1)')) * 
        ST_LENGTH(TO_GEOGRAPHY('LineString(0 0, 1 0)')) AS height_times_width,
      ST_AREA(TO_GEOGRAPHY('POLYGON((0 0, 1 0, 1 1, 0 1, 0 0))')) AS area;
+------------------+------------------+--------------------+------------------+
|           HEIGHT |            WIDTH | HEIGHT_TIMES_WIDTH |             AREA |
|------------------+------------------+--------------------+------------------|
| 111195.101177484 | 111195.101177484 |   12364350525.8709 | 12364036567.0764 |
+------------------+------------------+--------------------+------------------+