The area in shapefiles (ESRI shapefile .shp) is expressed in degrees longitude multiplied by degrees latitude, leading to the squared degree° (°)². It does not give a precise area of a territory, but as an idea, 1°° on Earth is not far from 10 000 km² or 100*100 km².

This measure does not take into account the geographical projection. In the extremist case, the area of 1°° on the two poles of our Earth does not represent more than 0km².

And all our Earth has an area of only 360*180, ie 64 800°°. One French department has an area of greatness of 1°°, this is equivalent to that of a region city like Ningbo, Zhejiang Province in China.