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Warmer and drier climatic conditions are projected for the 21st century; however, the role played by extreme climatic events on forest vulnerability is still little understood. For example, more severe droughts and heat waves could threaten quaternary relict tree refugia such as Circum-Mediterranean fir forests (CMFF). Using tree-ring data and a process-based model, we characterized the major climate constraints of recent (1950-2010) CMFF growth to project their vulnerability to 21st-century climate. Simulations predict a 30% growth reduction in some fir species with the 2050s business-as-usual emission scenario, whereas growth would increase in moist refugia due to a longer and warmer growing season. Fir populations currently subjected to warm and dry conditions will be the most vulnerable in the late 21st century when climatic conditions will be analogous to the most severe dry/heat spells causing dieback in the late 20th century. Quantification of growth trends based on climate scenarios could allow defining vulnerability thresholds in tree populations. The presented predictions call for conservation strategies to safeguard relict tree populations and anticipate how many refugia could be threatened by 21st-century dry spells., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

We evaluated the response of the Earth land biomes to drought by correlating a drought index with three global indicators of vegetation activity and growth: vegetation indices from satellite imagery, tree-ring growth series, and Aboveground Net Primary Production (ANPP) records. Arid and humid biomes are both affected by drought, and we suggest that the persistence of the water deficit (i.e., the drought time-scale) could be playing a key role in determining the sensitivity of land biomes to drought. We found that arid biomes respond to drought at short time-scales; that is, there is a rapid vegetation reaction as soon as water deficits below normal conditions occur. This may be due to the fact that plant species of arid regions have mechanisms allowing them to rapidly adapt to changing water availability. Humid biomes also respond to drought at short time-scales, but in this case the physiological mechanisms likely differ from those operating in arid biomes, as plants usually have a poor adaptability to water shortage. On the contrary, semiarid and subhumid biomes respond to drought at long time-scales, probably because plants are able to withstand water deficits, but they lack the rapid response of arid biomes to drought. These results are consistent among three vegetation parameters analyzed and across different land biomes, showing that the response of vegetation to drought depends on characteristic drought time-scales for each biome. Understanding the dominant time-scales at which drought most influences vegetation might help assessing the resistance and resilience of vegetation and improving our knowledge of vegetation vulnerability to climate change.