Comparison of a mechanistic sediment model and a water column model for hindcasting oxygen decay in benthic chambers

• Published in: Ecological modelling 2001-01, Vol.136 (2), p.255-267
• Main Authors: Herzfeld, M, Hamilton, D.P, Douglas, G.B
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animal and plant ecology; Animal, plant and microbial ecology; Australia, Western Australia; Benthic chamber; Biological and medical sciences; Brackish water ecosystems; Dissolved oxygen; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects. Techniques; Methods and techniques (sampling, tagging, trapping, modelling...); Sediments; Synecology
• ISSN: 0304-3800; 1872-7026
• DOI: 10.1016/S0304-3800(00)00429-4

Two methods are presented for deriving the sediment–water flux of dissolved oxygen (SOD), which may be used in models of dissolved oxygen dynamics in aquatic systems. The two models are reliant upon determination of SOD from the temperature and dissolved oxygen concentration of water overlying the sediments, but one model incorporates a mechanistic approach to describe variability of sediment properties, which also affects the SOD. Field data collected from benthic chamber deployments in the Swan River estuary, Western Australia, are used to evaluate the performance of each model. The sediment mechanistic model consistently produced better results than the water column model in hindcasting the decay of dissolved oxygen in the benthic chamber deployments. It produced root mean square errors of dissolved oxygen concentration that were generally