The use of space as a proxy for time is not new to farmers. When presented with climate change projections they can easily envisage shifting to a hotter and drier region. In many cases they don't have to travel far. In undulating landscapes wine grape growers are aware of strong temperature transects across their vineyard.

Advantages of this approach include the ability to ‘visit the future' and find people managing differently as a clue to adaptation. Climatic differences between the locations can be quantified and form a basis to interpret projections. However, a greater strength is emphasising local knowledge rather than climate change projections and simulation models and emphasising adaptation over impact studies and damage reports. Perhaps the greatest strength of spatial analogues is that they allow a middle road between catastrophe and business as usual.

Transects encourage a focus on the edges of systems (eg boundaries of crops or varieties) which can provide some sense of thresholds. An obvious limit is that climate is only one of many factors that change with distance. However transects can be used to think through how climate interacts with soil, water availability, land price, cost of production, distance to market and infrastructure.  The inability to visit a region with future carbon dioxide levels and the possibility of completely novel climates makes the approach more meaningful for considering more moderate changes in the near future (coming decades) rather than distant future.