What is a characteristic of equal-area projections?

Equal-area projections are designed to accurately represent the size of landmasses relative to each other. This means that the area of any feature shown on the map is proportional to its actual area on the Earth’s surface. This characteristic is crucial for various applications, such as demographic studies, resource management, and environmental assessments where understanding the relative sizes of different regions is important.

By maintaining the correct proportions of areas, equal-area projections ensure that comparisons between different regions can be made more accurately. For instance, a country that appears much larger than another on a particular map may not necessarily be that size when viewed on a globe; equal-area maps help remove this discrepancy. Hence, the strength of equal-area projections lies in their ability to facilitate an accurate assessment of size and area relationships among geographic features.