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In the face of climate change, populations have two survival options − they can remain in situ and tolerate the new climatic conditions (“stay”), or they can move to track their climatic niches (“go”). For sessile and small-stature organisms like alpine plants, staying requires broad climatic tolerances, realized niche shifts due to changing biotic interactions, acclimation through plasticity, or rapid genetic adaptation. Going, in contrast, requires good dispersal and colonization capacities. Neither the magnitude of climate change experienced locally nor the capacities required for staying/going in response to climate change are constant across landscapes, and both aspects may be strongly affected by local microclimatic variation associated with topographic complexity. We combine ideas from population and community ecology to discuss the effects of topographic complexity in the landscape on the immediate “stay” or “go …