This Joint Fire Science Program proposal seeks to characterize and compare different collaborative planning efforts for community protection and ecosystem restoration related to wildfire, and to determine key elements of collaborative success (Task 2 of AFP, 2003-1). There is a rich literature on collaboration on a broad range of natural resource issues, and a soon-to-be- completed project supported by the USDA Forest Service will provide a synthesis of this literature in terms of what it means for hazardous fuels management. We propose holding a facilitated workshop of land managers, partners, and social science researchers who would use this synthesis as the foundation to build a research proposal to identify the essential elements of collaboration and a blueprint for managers seeking more collaborative relationships with their partners. Collaborative planning is usually understood and studied as a social process at a single, primarily community scale, and much of the literature has employed a case study approach to evaluating specific applications of collaboration. However, as with any social process, collaboration occurs on multiple scales simultaneously, and effects and interactions at any particular scale are necessarily linked to higher and lower scale processes. Little research has examined collaboration on a particular issue such as fuels management within the larger context of multiple scales that cross political, institutional, or geographic boundaries. Yet, managing fuels, protecting communities, and restoring ecosystems from fire exclusion clearly require cooperation and coordination across both higher and low scale social systems as well as across multiple ownership and jurisdictions. At the workshop, we will identify the most fruitful approaches to analyzing collaboration across political, institutional, and geographic boundaries; identify research and manager partners; and develop a research proposal.