Increasing climate sensitivity of beech and pine is not mediated by adaptation and soil characteristics along a precipitation gradient in northeastern Germany

Rising temperature and altered precipitation regimes will lead to severe droughts and concomitant extreme events in the future. Forest ecosystems have shown to be especially prone to climate change. In assessing climate change impacts, many studies focus on high altitude or ecological edge populations where a climate signal is supposedly most pronounced. While these studies represent only a fraction of the forest ecosystems throughout Europe, findings on climate sensitivity of lowland core populations remain comparatively underrepresented. By using tree-ring widths of a large region-wide network of European beech and Scots pine populations along a precipitation gradient in northeastern Germany, we identify main climatic drivers and spatio-temporal patterns in climate sensitivity. Further, we analyze the resistance of tree growth towards drought. Detailed data on soil characteristics was used to interpret climate-growth relationships. Beech was found to be most sensitive to summer drought during early summer at dry sites, whereas pine displayed highest sensitivity for winter temperature at wet sites. The resistance to extreme drought was lower for beech. By splitting the observation period (1964-2017) into an early and late period, we found non-stationary climate-growth relationships for both study species with beech showing an increase in drought sensitivity and pine in winter temperature sensitivity. Overall, beech populations seem to be especially endangered by prospective climate changes, whereas climategrowth relationships of pine seem more ambiguous with a possible trade-off between enhanced photosynthetic activity caused by early photosynthesis in late winter and reduced activity due to summer drought.

Automated summary

The study reveals the impact of climate change on forest ecosystems, showing different climate sensitivities between European beech and Scots pine, with beech being most sensitive to drought. Observations suggest that beech populations are more vulnerable to future climate change, while the climate-growth relationships of pine are more complex.