How big is an acre? – Measuring Your Woodland
People who have not owned forestry or agricultural land can often find it hard to visualise what an acre looks like. This is an attempt to help you visualise how big an area one acre is.
An acre measures an area of land and is about 70 yards by 70 yards, which means about 4,900 square yards (or roughly 44,000 square feet).
A typical football pitch is about 110 yards by about 70 yards (the rules allow some flexibility in the size) so that a pitch covers about one and a half acres of field or, including the immediately surrounding land that goes with it, the football pitch takes up about 2 acres.
Another way to visualise one acre is as the area in which you could park about 150 cars. A typical supermarket, excluding the car park, covers about 0.6 of an acre (about 26,000 square feet).
A 9 acre woodland might be only equivalent to about 6 football pitches, but it will usually appear bigger than that for various reasons: you can’t see across it and a wood will have bumps and dips and other features, but the main thing is that a forest is three-dimensional. The trees give the extra dimension which makes a woodland so much more interesting and so much richer in biodiversity, and make it seem much bigger.
The other measurement often used for surface area is the metric measure - hectares. A hectare is precisely 100 metres by 100 metres and is much larger than an acre. About 2.47 acres make up one hectare, so an acre is only about 40% of the size of a hectare. One reason that acres, rather than hectares, are used in the UK is that, being a smaller measure, you get more of them in a given piece of land and it is easier to remember a round number of acres than a hectare measurement with a decimal point. However, one advantage of using hectares is that more detailed maps use grid lines where the distance between the lines is equivalent to 100 metres. The result of this is that each square covers exactly one hectare or approximately two and a half acres.
If you are trying to measure in approximate terms an acre of woodland you can pace it out as about 80 paces by 80 paces, though in woodlands people often take shorter paces so 70 yards may take more like 90 paces.
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Discussion
A Big Thanks to Woodland.co.uk for the education and a BIG thanks to those leaving your post answering questions and your stories…
j
Thanks blogs, you have been very helpful.
Well, you know the diameter (167 metres),
and hence the radius (83.5 M)
the area of a circle is πr2
(see http://www.mathsisfun.com/geometry/circle-area.html)
3.142 x (83.5)2 = 3.142 x 6972 M2 = 21907 M Sq
One acre = 4046.9 M Sq
(see http://www.metric-conversions.org/area/square-meters-to-acres.htm)
Hence 21907 M Sq is approx. 5.4 acres
Can anyone help? I own a round field so I can’t pace out any of its sides….how do I work out its size in acres? It measures 167metres in diameter equally at any point, which makes a perfect circle.
Thank you for clarifying my land situation, I had no idea
Thank you!! I purchased 1.25 acres of vacant land with nothing marking out the land so I had no real idea of the size of it. This was so helpful!
Thank you for your nice clear and reasonable explanation.
I have been longing to know the measurements of my land, now that I have known, its easy for me to plan for it productively.
Big up to you.
So very helpful!!!!
Tehre is this site as well which will help convert between different land areas: http://www.worldlandtrust.org/education/area-converter#.UdixTDtvPH8
hope it helps someone!
The best explanation ever for some of us visual people. Figures very difficult to put into perspective. Thank-you ever so much. Now I know how my 5 hectares is in a visual sense.
firstly, I dont know the differance between acres and hectares, but now this website have explain it to me, though am a farmer and tractor driver do cheat me, but now is not so again. Thank you!
Hello we are selling our 3 wood lots of 73 Hectares about 184 acres., a person asked me how many cords of wood are in an acre of land. I am in Sackville, New Brunswick, so not the B.C. woods where you would get a lot more cords per acre., so anyway any idea on an answer to this one?
Thank You,
Delilah
hi looking at my deeds to the house, the land is 1 acre 2 rods and 39 perches.
could some please tell me how big the land is in laymans terms
thanks andy
Have just watched the final part of Living with Monkeys during the program the narrator stated 125 million square yards a week of forest is being lost to illegal logging,
One thing about an acre no one has mentioned here. An acre is any area of 43,560 square feet. Conceivably an acre could be 1 foot wide and 43,560 feet long. A square acre is about 208′ X 208′. Finding that in the field would also be a bit unusual.
OK?
typo: 11%
Mick
if you google: england area
google calc tells that it is 50,346 square miles
if you google: 3000000 acres in square miles
google calc performs the conversion and tells it is 4687.5 square miles
so 3 million acres is about 9% of the size of England :)
Thank you. Great help…
How big is 3millon acres in respect to England please
finally understood how big an acre is, wonder why it wasnt explained to me like this in high school.
Thanks a million. I am almost 80 and finally I have an idea about the size of an acre. Really grateful.
Land for sale Exeter, Devon. Suit equine, orchard, meadow. South facing. 2/3 grass, 1/3 wood. Approx 6 acres but need to pace it out, now I know how.
my son just asked how bigs an acre, brill i will explain football picth,he will understand thank you, as my dad just bought 5 acres in wales for us all to enjoy,hoildays,campfires,planting,birds,wildlife,teepee up, what best ways for my children to grow up with, nature and wilflife,can’t wait for our first weekend stay,loving this site,so much to read and look forward to doing,brillant site!!!
Roughly how many broad leaved trees would you tend to plant for an acre of wood? I’m guessing roughly 1 every 6 feet = circa 1200 max?
Stu H
18 June, 2014