Contribution to Science

The ISA Soil Collections represent a scientific and historical archive of great value, serving as a fundamental tool for both pedological taxonomy identification and the preservation of long-term environmental records embedded in soils. These collections reflect edaphoclimatic conditions, biodiversity, and environmental and anthropogenic impacts that have shaped soil evolution over time.


The ISA Soil Monolith Collection is currently being studied through approaches that complement pedological taxonomy. Notably, it is being utilized in metagenomic studies, where ancient DNA extraction and sequencing techniques have been successfully applied to recover and identify different taxonomic groups, including bacteria, fungi, and vertebrates. These advances open new avenues for research in environmental reconstruction.


Additionally, studies on carbon dynamics over time are being conducted, providing a crucial long-term dataset. These records support the validation of current climate models, enhancing our understanding of environmental changes and their impact on soils.

Societal Impact

Soils possess a historical memory, making them essential for understanding past events, supporting decision-making for current challenges, and anticipating future trends. The soils preserved in this collection serve as a valuable record of environmental and anthropogenic impacts over time, enabling the reconstruction of past events, the identification of climatic shifts and trend variations, and the study of biodiversity patterns, both vegetal and animal. As such, this research is a fundamental tool for understanding natural and anthropogenic transitions and for developing sustainable management strategies.


Beyond its scientific and educational value, the Soil Monolith Collection plays a key role in public awareness, highlighting the importance of soil as a natural resource, the need for its conservation, and the significance of soil classification, correlation, and interpretation. Furthermore, these collections foster collaboration among national and international institutions, promoting research into soil potential and encouraging innovative approaches to soil preservation and management.

Application in Education

The ISA Soil Monolith Collection is a key educational tool, as it represents the main soil units of a given region. This collection is widely used across different ISA academic programs and facilitates scientific and pedagogical collaborations in interdisciplinary fields such as climatology, botany, and genetics.


In the case of Angola and Portugal, the extensive representation within the collection allows soil science students and related disciplines to study typical soil characteristics, properties, and environmental factors influencing soil formation. It serves as a valuable alternative to in-field soil profile observations, facilitating comparative analyses across various soil types and environmental conditions.

Notable Facts / Curiosities

With a total of 133 monoliths, this is a unique collection in Portugal and one of the most important globally for the study of tropical soils. In addition to samples from temperate regions, including the Mediterranean, it holds significant international relevance in soil science.


The collection was established in 1946 and has been continuously expanding, solidifying its role as a fundamental resource for research, education, and the conservation of soil knowledge.

Contact: Dr Diego Aran Ferreiro (diegoaran@isa.ulisboa.pt)