Tropical forests are experiencing dramatic perturbations due to climate and land-use change. Shifts in carbon flux dynamics, water cycling, forest structure, and species composition are changing feedbacks with globally important consequences for biodiversity, climate, and food production. Tropical forests are tremendously heterogeneous in their structure, dynamics, composition, climate, soils, and human impacts, with large variations within and among the tropical continents. Thus, tropical forest ecosystems are exhibiting varying responses to climate and land-use change. These differences remain highly uncertain and poorly understood. PANGEA is a NASA-funded effort to scope a multi-scale campaign in tropical forest regions focused on improving understanding of the heterogeneous responses to change, with a broad research focus on biodiversity, biogeochemical cycling, land-atmosphere interactions, and social-ecological systems. We spent 2024 working with international research and user communities to outline a potential campaign that would coordinate field, tower, and airborne remote sensing data collection to inform our use of satellite remote sensing and modeling. This once-in-a-decade opportunity assembled multi-disciplinary communities to align efforts and outline a focused research campaign. The objectives of the campaign are to: 1) Advance understanding of the vulnerability and resilience of tropical forest carbon cycling to global change; 2) Quantify similarities and differences within and among tropical regions; and 3) Provide the scientific and regionally specific basis for informed decision-making to guide societal responses to climate change mitigation and adaptation and biodiversity conservation. We report on the process of the PANGEA scoping effort and the white paper recommendations for a campaign that includes research, capacity building, and equitable engagement with international collaborators.