Dispersal and the resulting genetic exchange between populations in spatially heterogeneous environments is typically expected to impede adaptation to local conditions. However, theory suggests some cases where this paradigm breaks down, such as when dispersal provides demographic support and gene flow enhances adaptive capacity to populations experiencing variable population sizes or environmental shifts. A current major driver of environmental change is anthropogenic activities, where humans can both be a source of environmental heterogeneity in space that selects on traits within populations experiencing exchange and a source of environmental shifts in time to which populations must adapt for local persistence. I will present a series of models exploring the potential for a beneficial versus detrimental role of gene flow given anthropogenically-driven global change. First, I will present a model of coral adaptation to climate change, where, given dispersal between populations experiencing different thermal stress, the potential for propagule input to enhance recovery from stressful events outweighs the potential for gene flow to impede adaptation to local thermal conditions. Second, I will present a model of exchange between salmon hatchery and wild populations, where the fitness and demographic consequences of domestication selection in the hatchery critically depend on the relative timing of natural selection, hatchery release, and density dependence in the life cycle. Both of these examples illustrate how a basic science understanding of gene flow can inform conservation management and how models of evolutionary response to global change can inform a basic science understanding of the adaptive role of gene flow.