Square Kilometers to Kanals (km² to kanal)

1 square kilometer equals 1,976.843052 kanals (rounded).

1 square kilometer = 1,976.843052 kanals

How to convert square kilometers to kanals

To convert square kilometers to kanals, multiply the number of square kilometers by 1,976.843052. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply kanals by 0.0005058570528.

kanals = square kilometers × 1,976.843052

Example: 10 square kilometers = 19,768.43052 kanals.

About these units

Square Kilometer (km²)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One million square meters (100 hectares). Used for the area of cities, countries and lakes.

Metric land measure took a surprisingly long time to settle on the kilometer. The meter was defined in 1799, yet people initially preferred the myriameter, 10,000 meters, and the French phrase myriamètres par heure was still in print in 1802. The Netherlands adopted the kilometer in 1817 under the name mijl. Once the kilometer was established, the square kilometer followed naturally as the unit for areas too large to count comfortably in hectares or square meters.

One square kilometer is 1,000,000 square meters, or 100 hectares, about 0.3861 square miles or 247.1 acres. A useful picture comes from history: many medieval European cities were enclosed by walls around roughly a square kilometer, with Delft at about 0.9 km² and Lucca at about 1.09 km². A standard 18-hole golf course of 6,000 meters needs about 0.8 km². The symbol km² means the square of a kilometer, not a thousand square meters. The planned Square Kilometre Array radio telescope takes its name from the collecting area it aims for.

1 square kilometer = 1,000,000 square meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Square kilometre; Wikipedia: Kilometres per hour

Kanal (kanal)

Indian subcontinentTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

20 marla or 5,445 square feet (505.86 m²). Used for property in Pakistan and north India.

Pakistani property listings give large plots in kanals, and the same word appears in Punjab and Haryana across the border. Under British rule the kanal was standardized as 20 marlas, which is 605 square yards or 5,445 square feet, about 505.857 square metres. That makes it exactly an eighth of an acre, so 8 kanals fill an acre, and a hectare holds about 19.77 kanals.

The kanal is the middle step in a ladder of Punjabi land units. Below it sit the marla and the sarsahi, and above it the bigha and the acre. The bigha itself is not constant: Wikipedia lists it as 4 kanals in Punjab but 5 kanals in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which shows how little land units agree between regions.

Elsewhere in India other local names fill the same role. In east India 1 kanal is given as 4 katha in the article's list, while in Punjab it is 5 biswa. The figure used here is the Raj-era 5,445 square feet. A kanal is about 0.05 hectare.

1 kanal = 505.8570528 square meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Kanal (unit); Wikipedia: Marla (unit)

Related conversions

See all area units.