Constructing belts in two-dimensional arrangements with applications For H a set of lines in the Euclidean plane, $A(H)$ denotes the induced dissection, called the arrangement of H. We define the notion of a belt in $A(H)$, which is bounded by a subset of the edges in $A(H)$, and describe two algorithms for constructing belts. All this is motivated by applications to a host of seemingly unrelated problems including a type of range search and finding the minimum area triangle with the vertices taken from some finite set of points. 15 1 271 - 284 271 - 284 SIAM