Remote sensing has become an important tool for tropical forest biology and conservation because it allows the collection of data over large areas. Although remote sensing is well known for mapping land cover, land cover change, and select ecosystem properties, it has many other potential uses for understanding forest ecosystems and advancing conservation. In this symposium, we will explore uses of remote sensing of forests at large scales to gain insights into forest condition, changes, and threats. The presentations and discussion will share the same general research approach (remote sensing, often in conjunction with other geospatial data) but be topically diverse; applications of remote sensing we will cover include monitoring biodiversity and forest intactness, measuring changes in carbon stock, detecting road expansion, characterizing repeated forest loss, and detecting changes in forest health due to climate change. The goal of this symposium is to illustrate the broad range of uses for remote sensing in forests, including topics which are generally not thought of being as amenable to remote sensing, and demonstrate its value as a conservation tool across large areas for scientists and conservation practitioners with a variety of interests. We will focus on remote sensing at the continental, tropical, and global scales, as opposed to national or sub-national studies, because the applications of remote sensing we will discuss are more novel at larger scales and demonstrate the scalability of these emerging approaches. This symposium will interest anyone who is interested in large-scale monitoring of forests, spatial patterns of ecosystem services from forests or threats to forests, or applications of remote sensing. Including a range of uses of remote sensing will allow attendees to gain a broader sense of the current successes and limitations of remote sensing at large scales and what future advances may enable. Discussion following the presentation will focus on these topics.