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 climate-growth 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.

气温上升和降雨制度的变化将导致未来严重的干旱和随之而来的极端事件。事实证明，森林生态系统特别容易受到气候变化的影响。在评估气候变化影响时，许多研究集中在据称最明显的气候信号的高海拔地区或生态边缘人群。尽管这些研究仅代表了整个欧洲森林生态系统的一小部分，但有关低地核心种群对气候敏感性的发现仍然相对不足。

通过使用德国东北部降水梯度上的欧洲山毛榉和苏格兰松树种群的大型区域网络的年轮宽度，我们确定了气候敏感性的主要气候驱动因素和时空格局。此外，我们分析了树木生长对干旱的抵抗力。有关土壤特性的详细数据用于解释气候与生长的关系。

人们发现山毛榉在干旱的初夏对夏季干旱最敏感，而在潮湿的地方松树对冬季温度表现出最高的敏感性。山毛榉对极端干旱的抵抗力较低。通过将观察期（1964-2017年）分为早期和晚期，我们发现这两个研究物种的非平稳气候与生长的关系都与山毛榉有关，表明干旱敏感性和松木对冬季温度的敏感性增加。

总体而言，山毛榉种群似乎特别受到潜在的气候变化的威胁，而松树的气候与生长的关系似乎更加模棱两可，因为冬季后期早期光合作用引起的光合作用增强与夏季干旱导致活动减少之间可能存在取舍。