Talk:List of countries by length of coastline/Archive 1

Earlier oddity

Hi! Just wondered if anyone can help me- i'm looking for the coastline measurements for MAINLAND USA- i.e. not including Alaska and Hawaii. I see the USA measurement is 19,924km but i'm presuming it would be considerably lower if those two aren't included?

Please email me - esheppard@acpmagazines.co.nz thanks 202.50.245.82 (talk) 01:00, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Fractal measurement

Isn't there a problem in that the more accuraelt you measure the coastline of a country, the longer it is? Tompw 15:44, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, coastlines are fractal. This can be mitigated by taking data from a single source, which will presumably survey all coastlines at the same scale. EdC 02:54, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

No, this can not be mitigated. The whole exercise is meaningless. The order of the countries on the list will be different depending on the scale at which you measure. So to do this properly, you really need to have one list for the 100km scale, 10km, 1km, 100m, 10m, ... An even better approach is to just admit that the coastline has no definite length, and that this whole list therefore is nonsense. Lars Marius Garshol, 4 April 2006

That is true. The lenght of a coastline is not posible to get measured correctly. 195.3.97.222 15:48, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

It can be stablished it dependence with the scale of mesurement. I don't know if is done. It's a linear regression between the logarithm of the length and the logarithm of the scale. Thus we'd obtain the values of the two constants of the fit of Log(Length)=cte+D*Log(scale). If any of you know examples, please tell me. I'm interested on using it for my current Master studies on Coast Managing here at University of Cádiz. --Feministo (talk) 22:37, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Norway updates its estimate of its coastline length every 10 years or so. Every time it changes quite substantially. The reason ought to be obvious: the measurement, even using a specific scale, is not accurate because it cannot be accurate. This article should be deleted. --LarsMarius (talk) 09:45, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Russia

How does Russia ever have a shorter coastline then Norway! You only need to look at the map to see that Russia has a much longer coastline.

The problem is that coastlines don't have any specific length. It depends on the scale of measurement. So by setting the scales appropriately, you can get any answer you want. This whole list is pointless.--LarsMarius (talk) 16:22, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

To answer the original question, Norway has fjords all over. Russia's coastline is fairly straight, while the Norwegian coastline goes in and out numerous times. Including islands, Norway has roughly 83 000 kilometers of coastline. Take a local map of Western Norway, and a local map of any part along the Russian coast. Compare. Your question answered. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.166.246.198 (talk) 21:15, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

But Russia should still have a longer coastline, they are just way too big compared to a small country like Norway. Hadi Payami (talk) 04:18, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

no. learn maths. 92.196.3.28 (talk) 18:31, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Fun to see it boldly stated that Norway's coastline is 83,000km. Prior to 2011 the official number was 85,000, but when the Norwegian Map Authority recomputed it the new answer was 103,000km. Because, of course, even when you assume a specific length of ruler the computation is not reliable. But if you use a differently-sized ruler the answer becomes dramatically different. The CIA World Factbook gives the length of the coastline as 25,148 km. None of these numbers are wrong, because you can pick a length of ruler that will give you any of these answers. Again: to say a coastline has a specific length is wrong. It's just not true. --LarsMarius (talk) 09:49, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

First you need to define what a coastline is: the outline or contour of a coast; shoreline. http://www.yourdictionary.com/coastline Coast: the land next to the sea; seashore http://www.dictionary.com/browse/coast?s=t Should fjords or rivers be included, I think not. Should islands be included or just mainland? Example: Sweden has over 10,000 islands just in the Stockholm area. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ulfahl (talk • contribs) 09:45, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

References

Greenland

Greenland seems to be missing from the list. Since it constitutes rather a lot of coastline I was wondering if it might be a good idea to include it. Celcius 11:48, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Greenland is not the only one that was droped in the recent series of edits [1]. — Instantnood 14:38, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

This article notes, "Greenland is an autonomous country within Denmark" and, though this source cited for coastline length doesn't recognize anything notable from that, chooses to treat Greenland as a non-country for purposes of this article. The article treats the Faroe Islands (also a constituent country of the Kingdom of Denmark) as a country in its own right (though it is not ranked -- similarly to Greenland and a number of other named countries). It would seem more logical to me that, if the article is to make this distinction re Greenland, the distinction should also be made for the Faroe Islands, and the coastline lengths of those constituent countries should accrue to the Kingdom of Denmark. That would not be a good idea, IMO, and it would be better for this article to treat both Greenland and the Faroe Islands as countries for purposes of this article -- as they are treated by the source cited to support this article's assertions re coastline length. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 04:51, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Guinea-Bissau

That must be a mistake? Guinea-Bissau is here listed as having the longest coastline in West Africa but it is in fact one of the smallest countries in west africa. Though I do notice it has quite a lot of islands so maybe when theyre all put together it adds up.. -- Astrokey44|talk 08:45, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

There seem to be other mistakes/different figures too: France is given as 5500km of coast here but is 7329 in this list; Jordan is given as 19 rather than 26.6 ; UAE a coast of 650km rather than 2,870; Kenya 536km rather than 1586km, Canada given as .com/library/faq/blqzlongestcoastline.htm 243,792km rather than 265,523 -- Astrokey44|talk 09:30, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

You're going to find more and more discrepancies of this sort the more you look. Official figures for Norway's coastline vary from 13,000km to 550,000km. Basically you can produce any figure you want above a certain minimum limit (for Norway this would be about 2000km) by choosing the right scale at which to measure. The whole thing is just pointless. See Benoit Mandelbrot's discussion of the problem. Lars Marius Garshol, 4 April, 2006

Thanks Lars, but you are answering to a comment that was stated before the large scale rewrite of the article. Also, your point, was already taken into account when the poll for deletion took place (see template above). I suspect that the CIA World Factbook (which is the source of this article) has not used double standards (ie different scales) for its results. Fmore, the intro statement clearly says: "However, because length of coastline is a fractal measurement, measurements of a country's coastline at different scales will be different - the more detail, the longer the coastline will be. This is why there are different amounts given for a country's coastline." Do you agree? We will be glad to include you as a regular user in WP. Please sign up, there are many benefits and absolutely NO disadvantage. Message me (by clicking the [T] next to my name), to tell you how!  NikoSilver  ^{(T) @ (C)} 14:32, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I strongly suspect that the CIA World Factbook is not using a consistent scale factor for all coastlines. Observe that, in the top 20, China, Italy, Turkey and India have suspiciously round numbers quoted (14,500km, 7600km, 7200km and 7000km, respectively), compared to the extreme of Canada, which is quoted to six significant figures. These round numbers look like approximations, to me. And there are more inconsistencies. Here's the CIA's table. As of 2009-03-14, Norway's entry reads, "25,148 km (includes mainland 2,650 km, as well as long fjords, numerous small islands, and minor indentations 22,498 km; length of island coastlines 58,133 km)" In other words, the quoted figure of 25,148 km excludes a further 58,133km of island coastline which they admit to exist! Similarly, Malta is quoted as "196.8 km (does not include 56.01 km for the island of Gozo)". Other countries, though, have their islands included. If the CIA isn't even being consistent about whether islands are included, I very much doubt it's using a consistent scale of measurement.

Also, I find it very hard to believe that the coastline of the USA isn't even twice as long as the UK's. Yes, I understand fractals and scale. I understand that a country with small area can have a longer coastline than a country with large area. But Alaska alone is huge and has a very complex coastline with hundreds of islands, just like Canada. Surely, if you measured the coastline of Alaska and the UK at the same scale, Alaska's would be massively longer? And then add the rest of the US to that... Dricherby (talk) 14:03, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Countries deleted

Why are some countries removed from the list in a recent series of edit [2]? — Instantnood 14:19, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Like? I see the total is almost the same (195 vs 194). I got the figures from List of countries by compactness, who's authors in turn took them from the CIA World Factbook. I'd be happy to add whichever you want, if you provide a source that uses the same map-scale for measuring coastline.  NikoSilver  ^{(T) @ (C)} 00:44, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

To name a few, French Guiana, Netherlands Antilles, Réunion, Bermuda, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico. — Instantnood 15:57, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Correct. That would mean that they are missing from 2 more articles (List of countries by compactness and List of countries by Coast/Area ratio). However, they do exist in the World Factbook (here). Also, there may be some "countries" here that should not be included (hence the almost equal totals). I'll try to check them in all three articles the week after due to Greek Orthodox Easter holidays. I hope it can wait...  NikoSilver  ^{(T) @ (C)} 16:51, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks very much. — Instantnood 18:43, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Montenegro

You should switch Serbia&Montenegro into Montenegro only,since Serbia is now landlocked country,all coast of former S&M belongs to Montenegro. Area of Montenegro is not 251,643. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:648:8100:D440:915C:41B:9473:31D8 (talk) 19:08, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Spain

The dates for Spain are highly inacurate. The CIA worldfact book have the original mistake at the moment that count only the coastal line of Peninsular Spain but not the coast of the spanish islands. If we follow the National Institute of Stadistic, the official database of the spanish state, we have that the total lenght of the spanish coast is 7921 km as you can see in their official page: http://www.ine.es/INEBASE/temas/t43/a011/a1998/l0/1.1.2.xls

(see "Longitud de las Costas y fronteras")

So i recommend to correct the dates in this article.

The dates about frontiers should be improved too, the total is 2032 kms.

--Bentaguayre 17:53, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

gahhh... surface of country is not important!

greece is smaller than turkey, argentina than croatia... islands(etc) are important!

Sweden

Is there no way to get a list that use the same scale for all countries, as one of the points of having a list is that you can see the "ranking" of a specific country. The differences in this list must be extremly huge, since the ranking of some countries is very unrealistic, such as said above Russia - Norway and also Sweden - Estonia.

• I understand that all the data in the current article is taken from one and the same source; the CIA factbook; which I assume uses the same measurement scale for all countries it describes. It is not quite clear what scale they used, but I assume they use quite a detailed scale, measuring indentations of only a few meters in size or so, otherwise the list wouldn't differ so much from our intuition. Personally I think it would be more useful to have a list with measurements taken at a bigger scale, ignoring details smaller than say 10 meters. But until anyone finds a source like that, I guess the CIA factbook is the best source there is. RagingR2 17:11, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I guess CIA just collected information from different sources. That's the reason why this list has clear inconsistent data and result totally absurd to many people. It's a pity the article was not deleted, as it is a clear example of misinformation. --85.176.22.55 19:42, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
    • As for Estonia-Sweden example (as well as Estonia-Finland, for example) I would assume that reported coastline for Estonia includes that of islands, while for Sweden and Finland only mainland is taken into account. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.191.148.140 (talk) 21:38, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
      • As found on this website (in Estonian though), the mainland coastline is 1,242km, which is roughly the same as Finland's. The Estonian islands give an additional 2,552km--H2ppyme (talk) 19:43, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
        • According to the Swedish government agency Statistics Sweden the coastline for the Swedish mainland is 11 530 km, thus a bit more than the here listed 3 218 km. The total coastline for islands (in a sea) is 31 925 km. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.227.15.253 (talk) 12:59, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorting doesn't work

The table entries are sorted as strings rather than as numbers, so e.g., 9 > 80 > 700 > 1000000. Shouldn't be very hard to fix this problem. deeptrivia (talk) 23:10, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Coastline vs Shoreline distinction

As defined by the Atlas of Canada, there is a distinction between coastline and shoreline, the first being measured on a larger (though entirely arbitrarily chosen) scale and the second being measured on a smaller scale (it sounds like they mean "as small as possible", not realizing that this would make the shoreline infinitely long). Is this something that is used outside Canada as well? And then, even the shorter coastline of the Canadian Hydrographic Service is considerably longer than the figure given by the CIAWF, for which we really don't know what the source is (maybe we should ask the CIA, because if they have just gathered info from various sources, then this list is really pointless). I really agree that if the existence of this article is to be justified, we need several scales alongside each other. -- Jao 10:50, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Coastlines are not fractals and their lengths are not meaningless

Well they're not physically fractals. Their length is not infinite, it does not expand without limit, because there's a lower limit on the smallest ruler (sampling length) you can use to measure it. The Mandelbrot paper does not claim they are fractals, but says their measurement empirically behaves like a fractal over a certain range of scales (see paragraph 5). As long as you know the scale used (sampling length), comparisons have some validity and the measurements do have practical uses: the trouble is you can't be sure the CIA figures are all based on the same scale, because it isn't stated.

If your job was to study, patrol, navigate along, construct infrastructure along, defend, provide resources for, or patrol a coastline, you wouldn't say that its length is meaningless. But the measurements are often misused, especially when scale is not matched to purpose. For instance, coastline length is often quoted in the context of coastline security and sea patrols. Politicians and media commentators often link the need for or cost of patrolling the coastline with its length which may have been measured at scale of 100 metres or less. However, coast guard boats do not sail along the coastline, they sail in straight lines some kilometres off the coast and don't need to go up every inlet. The Canadian coast guard boast of patrolling 'the world's longest coastline' but do not have to patrol 202,080 km of it as stated in the table. They could do the job by patrolling a corridor about 10,000 km long some distance from the actual coastline (neglecting the fact that for most of the year they would have to patrol half of it by snowmobile). You can easily check this on Google Earth.

Which leads to the point that a much more useful parameter than length of coastline for many applications and comparison between countries would be area of territorial water or of marine economic zones (using a standard distance from coastline, eg 12 miles or 200 miles). These figures do not seem to be readily available though.

Rexparry sydney 14:04, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

In fact you should probably construct your own figure using a map, based on the actual points that it's relevant to your purpose to measure between. These could be located various distances inland or out to sea, and with various spacings, depending entirely on what arcane goal it is that you have in mind. 213.122.58.200 (talk) 00:32, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

dlatikay 14:01, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

They are not fractals conceptually either. Its geometric dimension is fractal (as opposed to euclidean) which just means, that you get a larger measurement the more fine-grained the measurement is peformed - nothing more, nothing less. If you dropped below a meter range, even tide will have a significant impact. A moderately useful world-wide compilation of coast line lengths could be done in two ways: 1. each country/government/land surveying etc. publish a Hausdorff number or description of their method along with their data or 2. no national sources are used at all and figures are computed off a global map.

Chile

While coastlines may not be fractals the absurdity of the numbers listed here are illustrated in an excellent fashion by the numbers presented for Chile. Like Norway (and perhaps maybe even more so), much of Chiles coast is made of up highly glaciated land (fiords, islands, etc). If we examine the "official" numbers listed here, Norway has 20X more coastline than land boundaries, while Chile has approximately the same coastline as land boundaries -- NONSENSE! Chile's land boundaries are fairly regular, while it's coastline, especially in the southern 40% of the country are SPECTACULARLY intricate. (Check it out on Google Earth or Maps). Obviously, the coastline of Norway and Chile have been measured with extremely different criteria. So much so as to make the numbers (at least in the case of these two nations) completely meaningless.

You can see an example of what I'm referring to here:

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=-51.131108,-74.616394&spn=1.344418,1.535339&z=9&om=0 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.254.238.101 (talk) 05:21, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Agree 100%,dispite of similar geography the survey of Norway seems far more exact and the country apears therefore with a shoreline much longer than Chile. Please take a look at the geography and extension of Cordillera Darwin and Wellington Island in Chile and explain how the numbers for Chile apear to be so low. I dont think Svalabard is enought to explain this diference. Dentren | ^Talk 20:07, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

extremely different criteria? Actually, the priciple I guess is to draw staight lines. Something tells me that Chile has opted for 500 kilometres. That means all and everything is within the mainland, except the Easter Island. --82.134.28.194 (talk) 08:44, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

"straight lines?" If Norway was measured using straight lines then it would not be as big as you say. Same thing with Chile. It is full of peninsulas and just plain non straight areas which really give it an even more spacious coast line. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.74.199.37 (talk) 02:30, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Haiti and Dominican Republic

According to this list, Haiti and Dominican Republic have different land boundaries, while in fact they only border each other and should have the same land boundaries. That must be a mistake. Jakas1 (talk) 19:35, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

perimeter

There is something fundamentally wrong with the perimeter figures, which are currently calculated by adding the coastline figure and the land boundary figure. That may be ok for continental countries and single island countries, however this is obviously wrong for archipelagos. The CIA Factbook does not list perimeter figures. I will be deleting the perimeter and coastline-to-perimeter figures since they are incorrect. --Polaron | Talk 21:09, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

canada area.

the area is listed as being a little over 9,000,000 km2, whereas the article on canada lists it as just under 10,000,000 km2. i didn't know how to edit it so i left this note here. if canada's is wrong (it is the top for coastline, after all) some others may be too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.150.205.98 (talk) 08:51, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

New Discussion

A discussion has been started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Lists of countries which could affect the inclusion criteria and title of this and other lists of countries. Editors are invited to participate. Pfainuk talk 11:40, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

De-facto countries

If Taiwan and Kosovo are included, then all other de facto states should be included too. --maxval (talk) 09:06, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Ratios given

countries with smaller area are kind of misrepresented by this kind of data due to dimensional issues, ie, one goes up linearly, while the other goes up quadratically. Should have ratio between Area and square of coastline length. If we assume somehow there is a proportionality, this seems like a more reasonable guess / interesting measure of smoothness. The problem with original measure is that a small country with a very smooth coastline has a high ratio. Perhaps this should be calculated and added —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.78.132.192 (talk) 06:26, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Length of international ocean border

The international ocean border does not have the "fractal" problem and is "smooth" line as a consequence of the 3? mile? arcs from each prominent point of land. International treaty and law establishes this line, as well as the boundaries of the different territorial and economic zones. What is this border line called? What are its lengths? Mulp (talk) 22:21, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

"Coastal waters", according to Maritime boundary, although I've always heard it called "the three mile limit". I don't think it's used for much if anything these days; the 12 mile "territorial waters" limit is more important. (The Territorial waters article describes it and several other boundaries, but as far as I can see doesn't mention the 3 mile limit at all). I'm afraid I don't know the lengths of any of them, though. 86.178.151.247 (talk) 09:40, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Criteria

Why is the CIA Factbook almost the only standard reference being used? The coastline evaluation used for Chile is incorrect when fjords aren't being considered unlike Norway. In Spain's case the Factbook seems to leave out the Canary Islands.

The Coastal and Marine Ecosystems — Marine Jurisdictions: Coastline length provided by EarthTrends should also be taken into account.

http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/coastal-marine/variable-61.html Selecciones de la Vida (talk) 21:51, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

You have to use the same source because it makes it more likely that the same scale is being used for the measurement. See Coastline paradox (and earlier on this talk page) for why. Absconded Northerner (talk) 16:11, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Netherlands Antilles

Should its entry be broken down? 119.237.156.46 (talk) 13:50, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

This article is very wrong

This article is very wrong. It states that the world's total length of coastline is 356,000 km, but if you add the top 5 countries with the longest length of coastline together (Canada, Indonesia, Greenland, Russia and the Philippines), it is already greater than that figure (374,825 km!). Unless we can get a better source, this article should be deleted. Hadi Payami (talk) 09:48, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. I noticed this too. The total of all the regions given in the first table (other than 'World' itself of course) is actually 806,306.01 km. However, I have not changed anything because the new figure has not come from the credited source, it's come from me :) Mattwinner (talk) 11:02, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Unit of Coastal Length data in the list using World Resource Institute's data

Unit of coastal length data in the list using World Resource Institute's data is shown to be square kilometers on this page while it is mentioned as kilometers on the webpage mentioned in the reference. Alok Bansal (talk) 20:06, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I reckon the World Resource Institute's figures are even worse than the CIA's figures. They did their calculations in 1989 and their figures are significantly larger than most of the other sources. Can anyone provide a complete list from a third source? The World Book, published by the United States, also has its own coastline figures, but they didn't have figures for all the countries. Hadi Payami (talk) 04:02, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

some errors in ratios

I can spot two obvious ones:
Saint Martin has 58.9 km coastline, 54.4 km² area and ratio marked as 1000. Actual ratio based on these numbers is almost 1100.
Nauru has 30 km coastline, 21 km² area and also ratio of 1000. However, 30,000/21 is over 1400...
85.217.23.162 (talk) 03:13, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

"Intervals"

The article makes it very clear that the chosen 'interval' makes a hige difference in the length - but then ignores telling what interval is used for the data given. If it is given then it is well hidden - it should be shown very predominately.

At least, it should be established if the figures can be compared between countries. Which will not be possible if the measurement method is unknown. If it is an inconsistent collection of numbers from national sources where every country uses a different approach to determine its coast line length, comparing them is pointless. Norway and British Columbia would perhaps outweigh much larger countries just because of the "convolutedness" of their coasts. The chapter about the fractal nature of coastlines is great (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox), it even introduces the concept of Hausdorff number but the list that follows provides no related information.

Montenegro coastline is off by a lot!

Montenegro does not have a coastline of the length put in the article. If someone can change, please do it! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.35.148.73 (talk) 21:48, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

I came to report the same thing. The reference link has a coastline of 293.5 km for Montenegro, not 12,874km as in the page.

Leading with Pardox

I find no other coastline list that leads with a definition of Coastline Paradox. At best it does not serve as an Overview. GenacGenac (talk) 22:17, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Algeria

Algeria Has 1644 km of coastline not 998 km

https://www.djazairess.com/alfadjr/182971 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Biskri biskra (talk • contribs) 18:31, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

France is missing? 🇫🇷

Any particular reason France does not appear in this list? Should be between Malaysia 🇲🇾 and Estonia 🇪🇪. Hallþórr (talk) 23:43, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

See World Factbook item 27 in the table, which lists Metropolitan France. Mindmatrix 00:57, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

The World Factbook table is inconsistent

For example it lists Estonia's coastline as 3 times as long as Finland's. As Finland's coastline is clearly much longer than Estonia's, this means The World Factbook uses different criterias for different countries. This makes the comparison really unfair. MaxPlays (talk) 07:38, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

There must be something wrong with this list.

I, being a Swede, absolutely refuse to believe that Sweden (35 on the list) has a shorter coastline than Estonia (31). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.211.201.66 (talk) 05:06, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Absolutely - the entire article, as has already been noted, needs to be treated with a huge amount of caution! Sweden comes in at position 13 with Estonia at 61 in the WRI listing which sits alongside the one you are concerned about - that's a staggering discrepancy in anyone's books! Geopersona (talk) 17:10, 9 March 2021 (UTC)