Using the stress energy tensor, we establish some monotonicity formulae for vector bundle-valued p-forms satisfying the conservation law, provided that the base Riemannian (resp. Kahler) manifolds poss some real (resp. complex) p-exhaustion functions. Vanishing theorems follow immediately from the monotonicity formulae under suitable growth conditions on the energy of the p-forms. As an application, we establish a monotonicity formula for the Ricci form of a Kahler manifold of constant scalar curvature and then get a growth condition to derive the Ricci flatness of the Kahler manifold. In particular, when the curvature does not change sign, the Kahler manifold is isometrically biholomorphic to C^m. Another application is to deduce the monotonicity formulae for volumes of minimal submanifolds in some outer spaces with suitable exhaustion functions. In this way, we recapture the classical volume monotonicity formulae of minimal submanifolds in Euclidean spaces. We also apply the vanishing theorems to Bernstein type problem of submanifolds in Euclidean spaces with parallel mean curvature. In particular, we may obtain Bernstein type results for minimal submanifolds, especially for minimal real Kahler submanifolds under weaker conditions.
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