Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Cultural Burning for Sourberry Basketry Material in Mariposa County, 2022-2023

Published by U.S. Geological Survey | Department of the Interior | Catalog Last Checked: August 01, 2026 at 06:05 AM | Dataset Last Updated: April 18, 2025 at 12:00 AM
Development of this research design attempted to help understand the effects of differing cultural cultivation techniques of sourberry shrubs (Rhus aromatica) for basketry material in Mariposa County. With the permission of Chairman Ron Goode, a randomized complete block design experiment was implemented in a old growth sourberry stand to assess quantitative measures of basketry production. Median plant height was assessed for each treatment area before any application of cultural management. Each 10m x 10m block contains four plots (4m x 4m) that have treatments randomly selected for each plot. Randomly selected treatments are one of the following: (1) Control, (2) Coppicing, (3) Coppicing + Burning, (4) Coppicing + Burning + Raking (or the subsequent mixing of ash back into the soil profile). Due to difficulty in implementation of treatments, block size was limited to 3 for this pilot study. Each treatment was implemented in the winter of 2022. Basketry material was harvested by community basket weavers in late summer/early fall of 2023, before the research team could evaluate basketry materials. The research team pivoted count data to assess the total number of quality basketry sticks harvested from each treatment. 6410 sourberry stems were counted in all of the blocks, and 177 stems were harvested.

Resources

2 resources available

Find Related Datasets

data.gov

An official website of the GSA's Technology Transformation Services

Looking for U.S. government information and services?
Visit USA.gov