Monsoon Asia refers to the portion of the Asian continent where a significant seasonal shift of wind patterns occurs throughout the entire area. The region includes the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, and China. The total area of land ecosystems in monsoon Asia is 21.4×10⁶ km², about 16% of earth’s land surface. Monsoon Asia is home to more than half of the world population. This region is covered by a range of ecosystems from tropical forests in Southeast Asia to boreal forests in the northern Asia and from temperate forests in eastern Asia to deserts in western Asia and tundra in the Himalayan Mountains. These ecosystems account for about 20% of the potential global terrestrial net primary productivity and for a similar fraction of the carbon stored in land ecosystems. Clearly, monsoon Asia is of critical importance to the understanding of how changing climates and human impacts interact to influence the structure and functioning of ecosystems and the biosphere.

Monsoon climate and land use have been suggested as two major factors that control net primary production (NPP) and carbon storage in the ecosystems of monsoon Asia. For example,Fu and Wen (1999) showed a strong correlation between the strength of monsoons in East Asia and net primary production estimated by remote sensing. The land ecosystems in monsoon Asia have been intensively disturbed or managed by human activities for many centuries and are now involved in rapid economic, social, and environmental changes. Previous studies have suggested that tropical Asia acted as an important source of carbon to the atmosphere, ranging from 25% to 31% of the global carbon emissions released from land ecosystems since the middle of the 18th century. Recent estimates have indicated that, for the 1980s, tropical deforestation in South and Southeast Asia released from one-third to more than half of the carbon lost from land-use change across the globe. On the other hand, other recent analyses based on atmospheric transport models and CO₂ observations suggest that the northern portion of monsoon Asia has acted as a carbon sink. The resolution of the uncertainty in the magnitude of the carbon source or sink in monsoon Asia, clearly, is a key to balancing the global carbon budget.

Tian, H.Q., J.M. Melillo, D.W. Kicklighter, S. Pan, J. Liu, A.D. McGuire and B. Moore III.  2003. Regional carbon dynamics in monsoon Asia and its implications to the global carbon cycle.  Global and Planetary Change 37:201-217.