Albers Equal Area Conic

As you might suppose, the Albers Equal Area Conic projection is a conic projection that maintains accurate area measurements. It differs from the Lambert Conformal Conic projection in preserving area rather than shape and in representing both poles as arcs rather than one pole as a single point. (Therefore, the meridians in an Albers Equal Area Conic do not converge at the poles.) The Albers Equal Area Conic uses two standard parallels, or secant lines.

First developed by Heinrich Christian Albers in the early nineteenth century for European maps, its biggest success has been for maps of North America—specifically, for maps for the conterminous United States.

Both poles are represented as arcs rather than as single points. Latitude lines are unequally spaced concentric circles, whose spacing decreases toward the poles..

Scale is true along the secants or standard parallels and constant along all parallels. In order to preserve area, the scale factor of a meridian at any given point is the reciprocal of that along the parallel.