Sediment oxygen demand (SOD) has become
an integral part of modeling dissolved oxygen
(DO) within surface water bodies. Because very few
data on SOD are available, it is common for modeler
to take SOD values from literature for use within DO
models. SOD is such an important parameter in
modeling DO that this approach may lead to
erroneous results. This paper reported on developing
an approach for monitoring sediment oxygen demand
conducted with undisturbed sediment core samples,
where the measured results were incorporated into a
water quality model for simulating and assessing
dissolved oxygen distribution in the Xindian River of
northern Taiwan. The measured results indicate that a
higher freshwater discharge results in a lower SOD