How many acres in a quarter section?
A quarter section is 160 acres (about 64.7 hectares) — one quarter of a 640-acre section, measuring roughly half a mile on each side.
Quarters are the everyday unit of prairie farmland in the Dominion Land Survey, the grid that covers Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and BC's Peace Country. Here are the related units — section, township and LSD — with sizes in acres, hectares and miles.
How many acres in a section?
A section is 640 acres — one square mile, about 259 hectares. It divides into four 160-acre quarter sections (NE, NW, SW, SE) or sixteen 40-acre legal subdivisions (LSDs), so a quarter is exactly one quadrant of the square mile.
How many sections in a township?
A township contains 36 sections, arranged in a 6 × 6 mile grid — about 23,040 acres (9,324 hectares) in total. The sections are numbered 1 to 36 starting at the southeast corner and snaking west and back, as the diagram below shows. How the townships themselves are counted north from the 49th parallel is covered in township, range and meridian explained.
How big is a quarter section?
A quarter section measures about ½ mile × ½ mile — roughly 800 m × 800 m. The four quarters of a section are named by compass quadrant — northeast (NE), northwest (NW), southwest (SW) and southeast (SE) — which is the “NE” in a description like NE-14-48-1-W5. How to read the full description is covered in how to read a legal land description.
How many acres in an LSD?
A legal subdivision (LSD) is 40 acres — about 16.2 hectares, a square roughly 400 m on a side. There are 16 LSDs in every section, and four LSDs in a 2×2 block make up one quarter section. The serpentine 1–16 numbering has its own guide: how LSD numbering works.
DLS units at a glance
| Unit | Acres | Hectares | Approx. dimensions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal subdivision (LSD) | 40 | ≈ 16.2 | ¼ mi × ¼ mi (≈ 400 m × 400 m) |
| Quarter section | 160 | ≈ 64.7 | ½ mi × ½ mi (≈ 800 m × 800 m) |
| Section | 640 | ≈ 259 | 1 mi × 1 mi (≈ 1.6 km × 1.6 km) |
| Township | 23,040 | ≈ 9,324 | 6 mi × 6 mi (≈ 9.7 km × 9.7 km) |
These are the nominal survey values. On the ground, boundaries follow the original survey monuments, so a “160-acre” quarter is rarely exactly 160 acres — meridian convergence, correction lines and road allowances all nudge real parcels a little off the ideal grid.
Find any quarter on the map
Paste a description like NE-14-48-1-W5 into the free lookup to see the quarter outlined on the map with its acreage and GPS coordinates — or try any LSD, quarter or section of your own.
Measure it in the field
The iPhone app turns any quarter, section or LSD into an outlined parcel with your live position on it — computed on-device with offline maps, no signal required.
Get Land Description Lookup for iPhoneSources & methodology
Positions on LandLookup.ca are computed from surveyed township corners published by the Government of Alberta (ATS / AltaLIS), Information Services Corporation of Saskatchewan (SaskGrid), the Government of Manitoba and the BC Energy Regulator. Read the full methodology and data sources and coverage notes.