Dissolved oxygen (DO) is considered a comprehensive parameter of water quality from the point of view of conventional pollution, so that remarkable modeling effort has been addressed to describe and quantify DO balance components, i.e. sources and sinks.
The oxygen demand exerted by bed sediments of rivers, lakes and estuaries (SOD), which is due to the oxidation of settled organic matter, could be of considerable importance; furthermore, SOD available modeling frameworks remain far from a complete understanding of complex phenomena involved.
The paper deals with recent efforts in SOD modeling, starting from empirical relationships up to diagenesis and boundary layer model; finally, the effects of SOD variations on dissolved oxygen levels in a river are assessed for a real case.
