This project is a holistic ecosystem evaluation of the changes in forest overstory and understory structure and fuel characteristics that result from restoration actions and wildfires. The objectives stem directly from the rapid increase in fuel treatments and the need to know that these treatments will succeed and be ecologically and socially acceptable over time. This project has two specific objectives: 1. To assess the effects of restoration (mechanical thinning) and wildfire on understory species composition and surface fuels. This includes (a) analyzing both monitoring data collected before and after mechanical fuels treatments in the Upper South Platte Watershed, and pre- and post-fire plot data in areas that burned at several severities in the Hayman fire, and (b) collecting new data to expand treatment evaluations and to facilitate comparisons with pre-existing data collected throughout the area. 2. To evaluate the effects of restoration versus wildfire on forest overstory and understory structure, fuels, and long-term fire behavior characteristics. Our objective here is to evaluate the relative effectiveness of restoration treatments and wildfire in achieving overall landscape restoration goals. This will yield insight into the potential of these two very different disturbances, one planned and one not, in meeting the short-term (i.e. 1-5 years) goals of land managers, with regard to overstory structure, understory species composition, and surface fuels, as well as long-term goals (25-50 years) for restoring features of sustainable landscapes. We will also use two models - the Fire and Fuels Extension of the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FFE-FVS), and the Fire Area Simulator (FARSITE) - to help answer questions about the effectiveness of thinning and the current fire regime (i.e. high severity fire) at mimicking the landscape processes that historically shaped the landscape (i.e. mixed-severity fire).