I need a river. Not a real one but a model one. As I develop my YouTube channel, Model Life, I want to be able to demonstrate the playability of numerical models by doing experiments and letting viewers decide what to do next. Think of the EmRiver mini-flumes but in a computer and made of numbers instead.

An EmRiver mini-flume demonstrated by the Earth Arcade for the British Science Festival in Hull, 2018.

The easiest thing to do would be to use data from a real river. However, whenever you do anything with real world data you risk playing games in a way that affects real people and their property. No, I needed something made from scratch. I need to grow a river from nothing.

Rivers are complex things and growing one takes a while. I’m not really sure how long it takes for a river to ‘mature’ but I decided 500 years would be a good start. Obviously, I’m not growing a real river, I’m growing one in a numerical model called CAESAR-Lisflood – it won’t take 500 years as models tend to be quicker than real life but still a long time, 100 days to be exact.

Starting on January 1^st with a featureless plain and shallow straight channel to get it going, I will be flowing virtual water through the model. Each day, the model will process 5 years’ worth of data, simulating the flow of water and the processes of geomorphology – the erosion, transport, and deposition of mud and rocks.

You can follow along on my FloodSkinner YouTube channel, a support channel for Model Life – there will be a new video every day for 100 days. You can join the conversation on YouTube or via the Fediverse or Twitter – I’d love to see your predictions of how you think the river will change next.