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“A football field is being lost every hour in Louisiana.” It’s almost become a cliche to say that. It’s been said about the state’s disappearing shoreline in every news item, government report, and barroom debate. It’s evocative, straightforward, and a little frightening.
Is this, yet, correct? Yes, says Brady Couvillion, a wetland geographer with the United States Geological Survey and the primary author of a 2011 report that popularised the idea.
“Although it does not occur at a consistent rate, coastal wetland loss in Louisiana from 1985 to 2010 averaged about a football field every hour,” Couvillion said Thursday (May 11), in what has become a well-worn statement for him. “But, that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.”
Couvillion observed a wetland loss rate of 16.6 square miles per year over 25 years in his 2011 paper. He sought to put a human face on the rate of land loss.
“It’s difficult to visualize 16.6 square miles per year,” he remarked. “Yet, stop anyone on the street and they’ll recognize a football field.”
The analogy spread like wildfire. It is used in a Super Bowl commercial to raise funds for coastal restoration.
Over several years, the hourly loss rate is an average, which gets lost in the rampant paraphrasing. “Couvillion said there would be no change in a few hours,” Couvillion said. “And if a hurricane hits, we could lose hundreds or thousands of football fields in a matter of hours.”
He also wants people to use “wetlands” instead of “land.” His report was about marshes and wetlands, not the rugged, dry land that some people fear is crumbling and plunging into the ocean one football field at a time.
How does an acre of land appear?
An acre can be measured in any shape, including rectangles, circles, and hexagons. It can be any length or width as long as the total land area does not exceed 43,560 square feet. A feather the length of a string, or 660 feet by 66 feet, is the most typical shape for an acre.
What is the size of an acre?
If you’re wondering how many miles are in an acre, you’ve come to the right place. One acre is 43,560 square feet, 1640 square miles (0.0015625), 4,840 square feet, or approximately 4,047 square meters (0.4047 hectares).
What is the number of 25-acre football fields?
If the end zones aren’t included, an American football field is 300 feet long. A square acre is 43,560 square feet in size.
Football fields at high schools, colleges, and the NFL are roughly the same size. The length of a conventional football field is 120 yards. The playground is 100 yards (300 feet) long, with 10 feet (30 feet) of depth at each end. 53 A regular yard width is 1/3 yards (160 ft).
In an acre and 10 acres, how many football fields are there?
One acre equals 43,560 square feet. Thus if you compute 10 acres, you’ll have roughly 435,600 square feet. Including the end zones, that’ll be 7,5 football fields. Is an acre equal to a football field? It’s not a complex math problem because a football field is around 1.32 acres in size.
