Lowpoly Atlas · country

Madagascar

Madagascar is drawn here at 263 vertices, from Natural Earth's 1:50m boundaries. Every figure below is measured from that geometry in an equal-area projection, not looked up.

Open Madagascar in the studio
Area595,959 km²
Coast and border at 1:50m4,295 km
Furthest from an edge265 km, at 18.29°S 46.70°E
Coastline dimension1.084
Compactness0.406
Separate landmasses3
Equatorsouthern hemisphere
Bordersno land borders

What these mean

Furthest from an edge is the pole of inaccessibility: the centre of the largest circle that fits inside the border, and so the hardest place in the country to leave it from. Coastline dimension is how much longer the outline gets as you measure it more finely - 1.0 is a straight line, and a deeply indented coast climbs towards 1.3. Compactness compares the area with the area of a circle of the same perimeter, so 1.0 is a perfect circle.

The length is given at a stated scale on purpose, and will be shorter than the figure you may have seen elsewhere. A coastline has no single length: measure it with a shorter ruler and you find more inlets, and the total grows without ever settling. These boundaries are drawn at 1:50 million, so Madagascar's 4,295 km is a floor rather than an answer, and the dimension of 1.084 above is the rate at which it would keep climbing. Area has no such problem and converges.