Understanding drought sensitivity of tree species and its intra-specific variation is required to estimatethe effects of climate change on forest productivity, carbon sequestration and tree mortality as well as todevelop adaptive forest management measures. Here, we studied the variation of drought reaction of sixEuropean Abies species and ten provenances of Abies alba planted in the drought prone eastern Austria.Tree-ring and X-ray densitometry data were used to generate early- and latewood measures for ring widthand wood density. Moreover, the drought reaction of species and provenances within six distinct droughtevents between 1970 and 2011, as identified by the standardized precipitation index, was determined byfour drought response measures. The mean reaction of species and provenances to drought events wasstrongly affected by the seasonal occurrence of the drought: a short, strong drought at the beginning ofthe growing season resulted in growth reductions up to 50%, while droughts at the end of the growingseason did not affect annual increment. Wood properties and drought response measures showed signif-icant variation among Abies species as well as among A. alba provenances. Whereas A. alba provenancesexplained significant parts in the variation of ring width measures, the Abies species explained significantparts in the variation of wood density parameters. A consistent pattern in drought response across the sixdrought events was observed only at the inter-specific level, where A. nordmanniana showed the highestresistance and A. cephalonica showed the best recovery after drought. In contrast, differences in droughtreaction among provenances were only found for the milder drought events in 1986, 1990, 1993 and2000 and the ranking of provenances varied at each drought event. This indicates that genetic variationin drought response within A. alba is more limited than among Abies species. Low correlations betweenwood density parameters and drought response measures suggest that wood density is a poor predictorof drought sensitivity in Abies spec. Keywords: Conifer; Silver fir; Drought response; Wood density; Growth reductiona Schlüsselwörter: Nadelbaum; Silbertanne; Dürrereaktion; Holzdichte; Wachstumsverminderung
