Merge pull request #142 from PecanProject/gsoc_2025_roundup

Add GSOC 2025 roundup blog post

Author: mdietze

blog/2025-09-05-gsoc-roundup.md

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+---
+title: GSoC '25 Project Roundup
+author: david_lebauer
+tags: [gsoc, gsoc25]
+---
+
+# GSOC 2025 Project Roundup: PEcAn's Ninth Year of Google Summer of Code!
+
+This summer marked the **ninth consecutive year** that the PEcAn Project participated in **Google Summer of Code (GSoC)**. Over that time, **30 student-led projects** have made significant contributions to PEcAn’s mission of advancing open, reproducible ecosystem modeling.
+
+The 2025 cohort continued this tradition with three contributions that improve functionality and user experience.
+
+## 2025 GSoC Projects
+
+### Akash B V: Ensemble-based Uncertainty Propagation Workflows
+
+Akash developed ensemble-based data preparation workflows for soils, weather, and vegetation initial conditions. This work enables PEcAn’s ability to represent uncertainty in ecosystem models and directly supports applications in NASA CMS and California Air Resources Board (CARB) carbon monitoring efforts.
+
+[Read Akash’s report →](https://substack.com/home/post/p-172403311)
+
+### Aritra Dey: Interactive Quarto Notebooks for PEcAn Workflows
+
+Aritra created interactive Quarto notebooks that provide lightweight, reproducible introductions to PEcAn, replacing the previous introductory workflows that relied heavily on databases and the web User Interface. As more scientists become familiar with notebooks, these offer more flexible, direct, and extensible introductions to PEcAn workflows. These notebooks lower the barrier to entry for students and researchers, making it easier to run PEcAn models, explore uncertainty, and learn ecological forecasting through hands-on examples.
+
+[Read Aritra’s post →](https://medium.com/@aritradey.nitt/my-gsoc-experience-pecan-project-cd4b2922e49f)
+
+### Harsh Agrawal: Decoupling PEcAn Workflows from BETYdb
+
+Harsh addressed a long-standing architectural challenge by reducing PEcAn’s reliance on its central database. By decoupling key workflows from BETYdb, his work improves portability, simplifies development, and makes the system more accessible to new users and contributors.
+
+[Read Harsh’s post →](https://medium.com/@harshagr838/breaking-free-from-the-database-my-google-summer-of-code-2025-journey-with-pecan-9820d21d9afa)
+
+## Beyond Software: Community and Mentorship
+
+GSoC projects reflect more than individual effort. They are the result of sustained mentorship, active code review, and an engaged open-source community. We thank the mentors and contributors who guided students, reviewed pull requests, and helped shape these projects into lasting improvements. And we thank Google for supporting open-source software **and community** development through GSoC.