The many ways topography buffers responses to climate change

During climate change, populations have two survival options - they can remain in situ and tolerate the new climatic conditions ('stay'), or they can migrate to track their climatic niches elsewhere ('go'). Staying requires broad climatic tolerances, niche shifts due to changing biotic interactions, acclimation through plasticity, or rapid genetic adaptation. Going, in contrast, requires good dispersal and colonization capacities. However, both the magnitude of climate change experienced locally and the capacities required for staying or going in response to climate change are not constant across landscapes, but affected by local microclimatic variation associated with topographic complexit…