Albers Equal Area Projection

An equal-area projection. The green shapes drawn on the map are equal-area circles on the surface of the earth. Known as "Tissot's indicatrix", they can be used to show the angular and areal distortion of a map projection. On a conformal projection, the shape of the circles is preserved, but the area is not. On a equal-area projection, the area is preserved but the shape is not.

Distortion is very large near the poles in this projection.