Is land inclination included in area calculation?

freebee@sh.itjust.works to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 260 points –

For example on wikipedia for Switzerland it says the country has an area of 41,285 km². Does this take into account that a lot of that area is actually angled at a steep inclination, thus the actual surface area is in effect larger than what you would expect when looking onto a map in satellite view?

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I can't remember if it was Matt Parker or Tom Scott who did a thing about this on youtube, and I think the answer was no, they just use whatever method is easiest to get these numbers, and they're not even using a consistent methodology from one country to the next.