Multidimensional microclimate velocities alter the picture of shifting climates in tropical forests

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint. You must log in to post a comment. There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 1 of this Preprint. Add a Comment You must log in to post a comment. Comments There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. Climate velocity—the speed and direction species must move to track climate change—is often estimated without accounting for vegetation-driven microclimatic variation. Using airborne lidar data from a tropical montane rainforest, we generated high-resolution 3D maps of topography and canopy structure to mechanistically model near-ground and within-canopy microclimates. Microclimate-derived temperature velocities were slower, revealing reduced dispersal demands. For terrestrial species, fine-scale maximum temperature velocities were frequently oriented toward dense vegetation patches in addition to higher elevations, contrasting traditional macroclimate-based predictions. Arboreal organisms could further reduce velocities by moving vertically within the canopy to cooler microhabitats, highlighting the role of 3D habitat structure in mitigating exposure. These results demonstrate that vegetation complexity creates localized microrefugia, enabling species persistence under warming by altering both the magnitude and direction of required range shifts. Our findings emphasize the need to integrate fine-scale habitat heterogeneity into climate resilience strategies to more accurately forecast biodiversity responses. https://doi.org/10.32942/X2VK9N Ecology and Evolutionary Biology climate change, Microclimate, climate velocity Published: 2025-07-15 12:38 Last Updated: 2025-07-15 12:38 CC BY Attribution 4.0 International Data and Code Availability Statement: Code is available at https://github.com/lysoifer/microclim-velocity-3d Language: English