NEWS

PEcAn.utils 1.8.2

distn.stats(): corrected the Weibull standard deviation formula, which was returning variance (b^2 * (...)) instead of SD (b * sqrt(...)). The test expectation is also corrected.
read.output(): an unsupported end.year type now stops execution (logger.severe) instead of silently continuing with a broken value (logger.error), matching the existing behaviour for start.year.
transformstats(): corrected the LSD-to-SE conversion. The denominator was t * sqrt(2 * n), but the correct derivation (LSD = t * sqrt(2) * SE) gives t * sqrt(2). The extra sqrt(n) factor made SE estimates from LSD-reporting studies appear sqrt(n) times smaller than true, over-weighting those observations in meta-analysis.

read.output(): start.year and end.year now default to NULL (read all years) instead of NA, and both NULL and NA are accepted as "read all years" sentinels (#3987).

New function nc_write_varfiles() creates text summaries of the variables in all netCDF files in an output directory, writing either one file named nc_vars.txt if output_mode = "combined" or a separate [filename].nc.var alongside each netCDF if output_mode = "paired" (#3611).
New function nc_merge_all_sites_by_year() combines many netCDFs into one file per year (#3620)
New function extract_nc_sda() extracts data from a multi-site netCDF created by nc_merge_all_sites_by_year (#3620).
Added CH4 and N2O variables to standard_vars

PEcAn.utils is now distributed under the BSD three-clause license instead of the NCSA Open Source license.

Shifted convert.input function from PEcAn.utils to PEcAn.DB with a new name convert_inputto remove circular dependency. (#3026; @nanu1605)
Added a stub function convert.input. (#3026; @nanu1605)
Updated unit conversions throughout PEcAn to use the units R package instead of the unmaintained udunits2. Note that both units and udunits2 interface with the same underlying compiled code, so the udunits2 system library is still required. (#2989; @nanu1605)
Fixed a bug in ud_convert() where it failed with objects of class "difftime" introduced by refactoring to use the units package instead of udunits (#3012)

All changes in 1.7.1 and earlier were recorded in a single file for all of the PEcAn packages; please see https://github.com/PecanProject/pecan/blob/v1.7.1/CHANGELOG.md for details.