Recent modelling studies suggest a decline of long-distance trade in energy carriers in future global renewable energy systems, compared to today's fossil based systems. In contrast, we discuss four important drivers of trade in such systems.

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In the late 2000s, slaughterhouses across the Amazon entered into a series of agreements designed to reduce the environmental impact of the local cattle sector. In this research, we analyze the impact of these agreements using a novel dataset showing the location of cattle vaccinations in 2014. In total, we estimate that more than half of the cattle herd in Novo Progresso was vaccinated on ranchlands which were either located in protected areas, were deforested since the agreements were put into place, were subject to an official embargo due to a violation of environmental or labor laws, or were not registered in the state of Pará's Rural Environmental Registry. The results suggest that hundreds of thousands of cattle continue to graze on areas in Southwest Pará which were meant to be excluded, per the terms of the recent cattle agreements, from the supply chain in a key Amazon cattle frontier. Our results highlight the importance of developing new systems for monitoring cattle supply chains in remote areas of the Amazon.

Although inter-and transdisciplinary research has found its way to the forefront of calls, funding and publications, interdisciplinary projects often start from scratch constructing their research environment. In this article we will point to the enormous potential, the learnings, as well as some of the difficulties and pitfalls frequently encountered in large interdisciplinary project consortia. With this in mind, we aim to transparently document and reflect upon our research process, reminding the readers that the authors are not academic specialists in the field of inter-and transdisciplinarity nor in the sociology of knowledge. To explain our motivation, we want to share valuable experiences and point to some learnings, especially regarding the interdependencies between inter-and transdisciplinarity. After a brief historical retrospective of the expectations towards science, the article describes the trajectory of knowledge production and integration of a rather large research consortium attempting to overcome typical communicative and conceptual hurdles while negotiating the strict preconceptions of the respective disciplines. During the process of knowledge integration, scientific recognition and time budgets remain the crucial challenges. Besides joint field research, the construction of four storylines and the continuous integration of data into the various and increasingly interlinked models that ultimately culminate in our future scenarios led to constant communication and disputes among the subprojects involved. During the course of the project, it became obvious that a new generation of young scientists is developing: scientists working in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary thought communities with a grasp of both fundamental science and transdisciplinary practice, combined with the soft skills necessary to reconcile both worlds.Zusammenfassung: Obwohl inter-und transdisziplinäre Forschung in aller Munde ist, beginnen Forschungskonsortien in der Regel ganz von vorne, wen sie ihre Forschungslandschaft aufbauen. In diesem Artikel werden wir auf die großen Potentiale und Lernprozesse sowie auf die Schwierigkeiten großer interdisziplinärer Forschungskonsortien hinweisen. Es ist unser Anliegen, unseren Forschungsprozess transparent zu dokumentieren und zu reflektieren. Wir weisen darauf hin, dass die wissenschaftlichen Schwerpunkte der AutorInnen nicht bei der Erforschung von Inter-und Transdisziplinarität liegen und wir auch keine Wissenssoziologen sind. Die Motivation dieser interdisziplinären Forschergruppe ist es, wertvolle Erfahrungen zu teilen und einige Lernerfahrungen besonders hervorzuheben. Nach einem kurzen Rückblick auf sich wandelnde Wissenschaftsbegriffe, beschreiben wir den Verlauf gemeinsamer Wissensproduktion und Integration im Carbiocial-Konsortium.; die Überwindung kommunikativer und konzeptioneller Hürden gehörten ebenso dazu, wie die Verhandlungsprozesse disziplinärer Grenzziehungen bzw. ihrer Lockerung. Hinsichtlich des Prozesses der Wissensintegration, bleiben die knappen Zeitbu...