Square Kilometers to Square Chains (km² to sq ch)

1 square kilometer equals 2,471.053815 square chains (rounded).

1 square kilometer = 2,471.053815 square chains

How to convert square kilometers to square chains

To convert square kilometers to square chains, multiply the number of square kilometers by 2,471.053815. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply square chains by 0.0004046856422 (rounded).

square chains = square kilometers × 2,471.053815

Example: 10 square kilometers = 24,710.53815 square chains.

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

Square Chain (sq ch)

US & ImperialTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

484 square yards (404.69 m²), one tenth of an acre. A surveying unit.

Surveyors rather than farmers gave this unit its shape. In 1620 the English clergyman and mathematician Edmund Gunter devised a measuring chain of 100 links that was 66 feet long, and by 1675 it was in wide use. A square chain, 66 feet by 66 feet, covers 4,356 square feet, or 484 square yards. The convenient result is that ten of them make exactly one acre, so a plot measured in chains could be turned into acres by moving a decimal point.

That arithmetic was the reason the US adopted the chain. A report by Thomas Jefferson in 1784 led to the Land Ordinance of 1785, which required the chain for surveying the public lands, and many American property lines still trace back to chain measurements. In metric terms a square chain is about 404.69 square meters. The linear chain remains in niche use, for example in railway milepost distances in Britain, in wildfire spread rates in the United States, and as the length of a cricket pitch.

1 square chain = 404.6856422 square meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Chain (unit); Wikipedia: Acre; Wikipedia: Rod (unit)

Related conversions

See all area units.