2002 Volume 14 Issue 1 Pages 137-144
A sediment oxygen demand, which indicates an activity of bacteria decomposing sedimentary organic matters , is one of the important factors of water and soil qualities in an enclosed sea area The purpose of this paper is to develop a method to measure the sediment oxygen demand on site , and to estimate the decomposition rate using these data The sediment oxygen demand is obtained by measuring dissolved oxygen (DO) of water just above sludge in a sealed core sampler. The measured results show that the sediment oxygen demand increases exponentially with the water temperature. The seasonal variation of sediment oxygen demand is estimated as functions of the water temperature and the dissolved oxygen which are measured at the same site every month. The estimated results demonstrate that the sediment oxygen demand mainly depends on the water temperature except when dissolved oxygen is too small for the aerobic decomposition.
