Conclusions
Results across the studied conifer species growing in a common environment of semi-arid area indicate that drought tolerance rather than efficiencies of resource acquisition are more important for tree growth as quantified by tree-ring analyses. Physiological characteristics reflecting higher resource acquisition (intrinsic instantaneous water and carbon flux capacity) showed significant negative correlations with drought resistance and resilience to extreme drought events that is underlain by an association between high hydraulic efficiency and small hydraulic safety margin. Results of this study suggest that hydraulic safety margin can be used as importance references in predicting interspecific variations in radial growth responses to drought events in water-limited environments, which would also shed light on the prediction of inter-specific variations in tree growth performances in a warming and drying world of the future.