USA State with the largest surface area

Probably alaska

Yeah, and I'd expect Colorado would be ahead of West Virginia, too. So would California,

Who Still Thinks wrote:

Yeah, and I'd expect Colorado would be ahead of West Virginia, too. So would California,

Alaska dummies. Huge surface area plus very mountainous.

Just a kid wrote:

Probably alaska

Gotta be..

West Virginia 🙄

Have you also been told that you are gullible?

West Virginia?

That's beyond dumb. That's HOF Stupid!

Do you have proof? Have you performed summer calculation? No? Oh, well I'm not surprised.

Pointing It Out wrote:

West Virginia?

That's beyond dumb. That's HOF Stupid!

The US itself is a state by the true definition of the word. Therefore, I would say that the US has the largest land area of any USA state.

Bark dogg wrote:

Do you have proof? Have you performed summer calculation? No? Oh, well I'm not surprised.

Pointing It Out wrote:

West Virginia?

That's beyond dumb. That's HOF Stupid!

First ballot HOFer Stupid!

Well done!

And you actually believed that? The lowest point in West Virginia is 1500 feet, and the highest is 4861.

Alaska ranges from sea level to the highest point in North America. In fact, Denali has a much higher base to peak elevation change than Everest (the base of Denali isn't much higher than the lowest point in West Virginia). In addition, it has the following ranges that are all much taller than the Appalachian mountains: Alaska Range, Aleutian Range, Brooks Range, Chugach Mountains, Coast Mountains, Kenai Mountains, St. Elias Mountains, Talkeetna Mountains, Wrangell Mountains.

What has more surface area, a tent, that I'd erect and ready to sleep in, or one that is clumped up after just taking it out of the bag. Well if you're looking from 50 feet directly above....sure you'll say the set up tent ready for sleeping....Something tells me none of you have looked at the terrain in detail in Google earth pro.

reality check ..... wrote:

And you actually believed that? The lowest point in West Virginia is 1500 feet, and the highest is 4861.

Alaska ranges from sea level to the highest point in North America. In fact, Denali has a much higher base to peak elevation change than Everest (the base of Denali isn't much higher than the lowest point in West Virginia). In addition, it has the following ranges that are all much taller than the Appalachian mountains: Alaska Range, Aleutian Range, Brooks Range, Chugach Mountains, Coast Mountains, Kenai Mountains, St. Elias Mountains, Talkeetna Mountains, Wrangell Mountains.

Must I explain everything to you dweebs!?

Alaska obviously has the most surface area, mountains aside it has twice the area of any other state with Texas being a distant second. Hear that brojos. 2nd. You lose.

In ecology and geography scientists sometimes use a index that measures surface ruggedness. Simply set out randomize points in a given area and measure the percent slope, from that you can obtain averages, and then you calculate the average percent slope per unit area (kilometers squared or miles squared) and you can compare different land masses, such as states.

Thing about states like Colorado, Wyoming, and even Alaska, more than half those states are pretty flat. Colorado has the Rockies bisecting it, but the eastern half is basically Kansas/Nebraska. Alaska includes some of the most rugged mountains in the world with the massive Chugach, Alaska, and Brooks ranges but most of the western half is rolling/flat, with scattered mountain ranges. And the North Slope, the size of Montana, is flatter than a pancake.

So indeed WV might be up there as far as percent of area on a steep hillside (ruggedness). And as such, if you count the total surface area in a linear square mile (i.e., account for the vertical) a state like West Virginia would have a lot of surface area for its size. But nowhere near the state with most surface area, per the OP's statement.

One state that might surprise you with the amount of mountain terrain is Idaho. Pretty much the entire northern 2/3 of the state steep is up or down. Southern 1/3 is rolling and flat high desert.

End of lesson.

dictionary pointer wrote:

it's been told that West Virginia has the largest surface area due to it's extreme elevation changes covering the whole state. You have to imagine that you stretched out a winkled sheet or a crumpled newspaper into a flat surface.

This is a news report about the study you are talking about. According to this study, West Virginia is the least flat of the lower 48 states. Alaska and Hawaii were excluded. The story explains the methodology.

Bark dogg wrote:

Do you have proof? Have you performed summer calculation? No? Oh, well I'm not surprised.

Pointing It Out wrote:

West Virginia?

That's beyond dumb. That's HOF Stupid!

Uh, common sense that it is not the biggest nor the most mountainous. Idiot. Are you in an RV right now?

isn't hawaii a volcano. Something tells me the base of that volcano is pretty deep. What if if you measured that?

yea, measure it from the base of the ocean and it's bigger than china

duh

Here's a little more description of the methodology, but the whole article is not available without a fee:

Does perception match reality when people judge the flatness of large areas, such as U.S. states? The authors conducted a geomorphometric analysis of the contiguous United States, employing publicly available geographic software, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) elevation data, and a new algorithm for measuring flatness. Each 90-meter cell was categorized as not flat, flat, flatter, or flattest, and each state was measured in terms of percentage flat, flatter, and flattest as well as absolute area in each category. Ultimately, forty-eight states plus the District of Columbia were mapped and ranked according to these values.

As the description says, it's a measurement of the percentage of the area of a state that is not flat, so total surface area is not a factor. Essentially, West Virginia has the highest percentage of the lower 48 states that is not flat. It sounds like that conclusion got garbled in translation.

I found a copy of the paper online:

http://www.disruptivegeo.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/FlatMap_GeographicalReview_DobsonCampbell_2013Nov.pdf

Florida is flattest. West Virginia is least flat.

geoDude wrote:

dictionary pointer wrote:

it's been told that West Virginia has the largest surface area due to it's extreme elevation changes covering the whole state. You have to imagine that you stretched out a winkled sheet or a crumpled newspaper into a flat surface.

This is a news report about the study you are talking about. According to this study, West Virginia is the least flat of the lower 48 states. Alaska and Hawaii were excluded. The story explains the methodology.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140314-flattest-states-geography-topography-science/

Interesting. Nothing about largest surface area, however. I may not have guessed West Virginia as the least flat, but I would have guessed Florida as the flattest. And large sections of Colorado are flat, so it doesn't surprise me that it's not the least flat.

A surface area measurement of a rough surface is a classic example of fractal dimensions. The measurement of a length of a coastline, for example, depends on the size of the measuring unit. If I use a 1 foot stick and trace every bend, I'll get a much larger measurement than if I take a 1 mile stick and measure.