Non expected output of distance between SpatVector objects

[LuisLauM]

Hello.

I am having a little problem with the distance function. When I apply it on two SpatVector objects that have CRS WGS84 (EPSG:4326), the results it returns don't seem to be in meters or km. Maybe I am forgetting some intermediate step, but I don't know which one exactly. I leave my script and the reproducible data:

require(terra)

# Read main polygon of Peru
peru <- vect(x = "gadm41_PER.gpkg", 
             layer = "ADM_ADM_0")

# Convert lon/lat coordinates 
read.csv(file = "lonlat_pts.csv") |> 
  
  # Convert to SpatVector object
  vect(crs = "EPSG:4326") |> 
  
  # Calculate distances in meters
  distance(y = peru, unit = "m")

When I change the unit argument from m to km, the results are divided by 1000 (logically), but the values are not correct and seem to be affected on a scale of ~105. That is, 1m in the result (of the script) represents ~105m in reality.

Data:

• lonlat_pts.csv (attached) lonlat_pts.csv
• gadm41_PER.gpkg (downloaded from GADM.org)

I'm using the latest (Github) version of terra: 1.7.82

[kadyb]

This is described in the docs:

If x is a SpatVector: The distance is always expressed in meter, except when the coordinate reference system is longitude/latitude AND one of the SpatVector(s) consists of lines or polygons. In that case the distance is in degrees, and thus not very useful (this will be fixed soon).