Source-to-Sea Catchment Symphony | River Trent Hydrology Sonification

Wed 18 Oct 2023 · 00:00 UTC Day 1 of 7 · Step 1 / 673

Catchment Rain (15m) 0.0 mm

Estuary Gateway Flow — m³/s

Mean Basin Surge 0%

Initializes Web Audio spatial synthesis (−0.9 L to +0.9 R)

Playback Speed 12 steps/s (~56s)

Master Gain 85%

7-Day Master Timeline (15-Minute Steps) 18 Oct 2023 00:00 → 25 Oct 2023 00:00 UTC

Catchment Station Channels (Source → Sea)

Independent local flow normalization (0.0 → 1.0) balances upland headwaters with the wide lower Trent. Solo or mute any gauge to isolate the flood wave.

How Hydrology Maps to Sound

1. Stereo Catchment Geography

Six UK Environment Agency gauges along the River Trent are anchored via Web Audio StereoPannerNodes from −0.90 L (Stoke-on-Trent upland headwaters, 53 km²) across the Midlands plain to +0.90 R (North Muskham tidal gateway, 8,231 km²), blended inside a shared stereo valley convolution reverb.

2. Rainfall → Droplet Plucks (0.2 mm)

Tipping-bucket rain gauges record discrete 0.2 mm increments every 15 minutes. Whenever rainfall exceeds 0 mm, the engine schedules stratified, micro-jittered sub-steps proportional to the number of 0.2 mm bucket tips—triggering high C-Lydian pentatonic bubble-sine and filtered-noise water droplets.

3. River Flow → Bowed Cello Fifths

Each station drives a continuous detuned sawtooth & woody triangle cello voice tuned in ascending perfect fifths from estuary contrabass to upland treble (C2 · G2 · D3 · A3 · E4 · B4). Rising discharge opens a warm low-pass filter, swells bowed gain, and deepens current-driven vibrato.

4. Flood-Wave Propagation

Every gauge’s waterFlow (m³/s) is linearly interpolated onto a unified 15-minute timeline and normalized locally (0.0 → 1.0). Flashy 11 m³/s upland tributaries sing at full weight on Storm Day 3—then, long after rain ceases, you hear the silent-sky 700 m³/s flood crest sweep from left to right into the estuary.