Jordan's Blog

Exploring Real Life DagobahMay 31, 2006
When Jedi Master Yoda fled to Dagobah aboard an escape pod and went into hiding (in a deleted scene from Revenge of the Sith), it may have been an ideal spot to disappear from the eyes of the growing Empire, but it's not the easiest place to set up a cozy home. Covered in jungles of gnarled trees with misty swamps, bizarre creatures, and never-ending rain, Dagobah is one of the more unusual planets in a galaxy far, far away. Its large lagoons are home to enormous snakes and other creatures that swim in the murky waters. Years later, Anakin Skywalker's son Luke would find the hidden planet by using the Force (as instructed by his mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi) and would seek out Jedi training from a much older, but still wiser Yoda. The unrelenting rainfall and unpredictable bog creatures made Skywalker's training all the more difficult, but he continued his tasks at hand, and eventually became a great Jedi like his father before him.

Here on Earth, Yoda might have made a similar home in wetlands around the world including the lush
Everglades. When it came time to bring Dagobah to the big screen for The Empire Strikes Back, Associate Producer Robert Watts went to real-world swamps in Florida, South America, the Caribbean and
East Africa to explore possible filming locations. The movie makers decided that shooting in a real swamp would be too difficult, dangerous and time-consuming, so they decided to build their own indoors in a movie studio. This allowed them to mix and match features from different swamps around the world. Production Designer Norman Reynolds built Dagobah's trees based on artist Ralph McQuarrie's designs, as well as real-world examples from the swamps of
Nigeria.

Similar to Dagobah, much of the wetlands here on this planet are often described as having a temperate and humid atmosphere with a large amount of vegetation like trees, tall shrubs, and large plants surrounded in slow-moving or still water. And even though the wetlands cover less than 10 percent of the planet's surface, the wetlands are the source of almost one-quarter of the world's productivity. Here are a few facts about the wetlands here on Earth.

What exactly is a wetland?
There are many official definitions of what constitutes a wetland. Generally speaking it is land that is saturated in shallow water making the soil soggy and difficult, if not impossible at times, to walk on. Because it's somewhere in between terrestrial and aquatic, a wetland has a special ecosystem that unique plants and animals thrive on.

What's the difference between a swamp and a marsh?

While a swamp can be described as a freshwater wetland with plenty of woody vegetation like trees and shrubs, a marsh mostly has tall grasses, reeds and other plants growing in very shallow water that can be fresh or salt, and is almost always flooded. Both swamps and marshes can be found alongside rivers, creeks and lakes.

What is a bog?

A bog is a very acidic wetland that has no flow of water, and is a happy growing area for many kinds of mosses such as sphagnum. Dead plants also pile up and decay in the bog which in turn forms peat moss.

Where are some of the more famous swamps?

In the United States some of the most well-known wetlands are the Everglades (in Florida), Okefenokee Swamp (in Georgia and Florida) and the Great Dismal Swamp (in Virginia and
North Carolina). Other swamps outside of the U.S. include the
Bangweulu
Swamp in Zambia, Niger Delta in Nigeria,
Asmat
Swamp in Indonesia, and the
Vasyugan
Swamp in
Russia.

What kinds of plants can be found in these wetlands?

Everything from tasty edibles like cranberries and wild rice, as well as exotic-looking cattails and willows can be spotted growing in the wetlands. Three types of plants generally thrive in this environment. Plants that grow out from the water are called emergents, while submergents grow completely underwater. Floating plants like the lotus also grow in the wetlands.

Unusual-looking trees like the Bald (Swamp)
Cypress (Taxodium distichum) grow mainly along riverside (also known as riparian) wetlands which are flooded regularly. The tall trees can grow up to 45 meters tall and with a trunk diameter of up to three meters! The Bald Cypress is official state tree of
Louisiana and is often revered as the symbol of the southern swamps also known as the bayou.

What non-swamp trees look like those found on Dagobah?

When Star Wars artist Ralph McQuarrie brought to idea of Dagobah to life in his paintings, he may have been inspired huge banyan trees, which are native to swamps in India, but can also be spotted in an island paradise like
Hawaii. The massive, exposed root systems of these trees indeed resemble the enormous Dagobah trees as seen in The Empire Strikes Back. Often referred to as "The Tree with a Thousand Trunks," the banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis) will grow to a certain size then its huge branches will send down rope-like roots which then anchor themselves in the soil and eventually thicken which make it look like additional trunks. Often times the canopy (top) of the tree will grow so large that it covers several acres! One of the largest living banyan trees can be found in the Calcutta Botanic Gardens. It has over 1,700 trunks and is over 200 years old!

What animals call the wetlands home?

Lots of creatures and insects live in the wetlands including mosquitoes, dragonflies, leeches, many aquatic insects, snails, toads, bass, crocodile, alligators, snakes, turtles, frogs, salamanders, crayfish, beavers, and muskrats. Many animals also periodically migrate to the wetlands depending on the season such as whooping cranes, geese, sparrows, swans, bitterns, ducks, stilts, deer, elk, black and brown bear, bald eagles, trout, and salmon.

Why are the wetlands in danger? Why do we need to protect them?

Almost half of the endangered species in the
United States such as the American crocodile and the wood stork live on or indirectly rely on the wetlands to live. But because of growing agriculture and urban expansion, the wetlands are dwindling at an alarming rate. Do your part by reading more about the wetlands, joining a wetlands protection group and asking your teacher to help educate fellow classmates on what can be done to help.

If you would like to learn more about swamps and the creatures that live in them, please visit your local or school library for more detailed books. Also feel free to print out this fun wetlands coloring book from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

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