Hello. I am new to this community and I am not an expert in coordinate systems or projections, so please pardon my ignorance on these topics. I am, however, a long term ArcGIS user (using Pro now for several years) and I would like to try to get an authoritative answer about something that has been confusing me for years.
I frequently work on projects that cover large spatial extents (e.g., the whole eastern U.S.) but require accurate area measurements for hundreds of thousands of polygons that lack regional bias. I've read for years about how projections affect area calculations and I've experienced these effects enough to know some basic rules of thumb like "never measure area in a Web Mercator projection" or "always measure acreage using the most local equal-area projection you can."
