The paper presents methods of area calculation, which may be applied for big geodesic polygons on the ellipsoid. Proposal developed by the authors of this paper is discussed. The proposed methods are compared with other, alternative methods of area calculation of such polygons. Test calculations are performed for administrative units in Poland. The obtained results are also compared with areas of those units registered in statistical annals. Utilisation of the equal-area map projections of the ellipsoid onto a plane seems to be the best solution for the discussed task. In the case of small distances between points we may expect accurate results of calculations, since the area size is influenced by the projection reductions only, which are small in such cases. In some cases their influence on results of calculations may be neglected. Then, only re-calculation of co-ordinates from the GRS80 ellipsoid to the cartographic, equal-area projection is required.

The paper presents a method of construction of cylindrical and azimuthal equalarea map projections of a triaxial ellipsoid. Equations of a triaxial ellipsoid are a function of reduced coordinates and functions of projections are expressed with use of the normal elliptic integral of the second kind and Jacobian elliptic functions. This solution allows us to use standard methods of solving such integrals and functions. The article also presents functions for the calculation of distortion. The maps illustrate the basic properties of developed map projections. Distortion of areas and lengths are presented on isograms and by Tissot’s indicatrixes with garticules of reduced coordinates. In this paper the author continues his considerations of the application of reduced coordinates to the construction of map projections for equidistant map projections. The developed method can be used in planetary cartography for mapping irregular objects, for which tri-axial ellipsoids have been accepted as reference surfaces. It can also be used to calculate the surface areas of regions located on these objects. The calculations were carried out for a tri-axial ellipsoid with semi-axes a = 267:5 m, b = 147 m, c = 104:5 m accepted as a reference ellipsoid for the Itokawa asteroid.