50 kilometers 
) « /Protécted Areas 
went immediately into the press. The after- 
noons were sticky and oppressive in the open 
wetlands. We ended around four o’clock when 
we couldn’t take the heat anymore, giving us 
time to process our plant specimen and clean 
up our notes. At that point, the plants went 
directly from the presses into rice sacks with 
alcohol for preservation. 
We surveyed all the herbaceous wetlands 
across the Nakai Plateau. These wetlands inter- 
mingled with rice paddies and were often used 
as grazing pasture. We began our collections in 
large, easy to access wetlands on the south side 
of the Nam Theun River. To guide us, we used 
paper topographic maps. We then made our way 
to more forested wetlands and riparian forests, 
northwest towards the dam site and onward to 
an area that was nicknamed Thousand Islands 
because of how the landscape flooded during 
the monsoon rains. From there we continued 
east, across the river, near the foothills of the 
Annamite Mountains. 
Glyptostrobus 21 
wetland habitat and developing a wildlife management plan for the Nam Theun 2 Hydropower Project. 
The first potential wildlife habitat restora- 
tion site we visited was northeast of Thousand 
Islands, near the Nam Xot tributary to the Nam 
Theun River. Our colleague Pierre Dubeau, a 
geospatial scientist who had sited these poten- 
tial restoration areas, exuberantly walked down- 
stream through the forested wetland toward 
an area with large wetland grasses (Neyraudia 
reynaudiana). Maxwell and I followed Dubeau 
and wildlife biologist Rob Timmins, who was 
carrying an umbrella in the sprinkling warm 
afternoon rain. We agreed that this would be 
a great open location, ideal for wildlife habi- 
tat restoration. As we trudged back among a 
mucky mess of the forested wetland swamp, I 
stumbled over something and fell to my hands 
in the soggy soils. I slowly got up, shook off 
the fall, and investigated what I tripped over. 
It looked like a pneumatophore—the cypress 
knees I knew from my childhood in coastal 
Georgia, where bald cypress (Taxodium disti- 
chum) are a dominant feature of the swamps. 
ARNOLD ARBORETUM, ESRI, GARMIN, AND GIS COMMUNITY 
