Shape_area and ALAND AWATER in Tiger census data
The units of ALAND and AWATER are square meters. E.g., tl_2015_us_county.dbf
has a record for Cuming County with ALAND = 1477895811
and AWATER = 10447360
. From Wikipedia the area is 575 mi^2
. If you convert 575 mi^2
to sq. meters you get same result as ALAND + AWATER