Figure 1. Conceptual framework of the climatic debt determinism.

The climatic debt is an integrative measure of the lag in the reorganization of plant communities driven by climate change, but also by the environmental context (that is, baseline conditions and magnitude of change) that interferes with this response. These environmental factors can have an impact on plant communities either directly or indirectly, through biotic mechanisms involved in species' persistence and species' migration, leading to an extinction debt and an immigration credit, respectively, thereby modulating the climatic debt.