Abstract: Geoconservation has gained a growing recognition in the last three decades. Significant steps have been given to identify, assess, and protect many geosites worldwide. Several countries have published national geosite inventories but quite often soils are not included in these inventories. Consequently, soils are usually disregarded in geoconservation strategies, in spite of they are geodiversity elements with different types of values that support crucial ecosystem services. Soils have multiple functions and provide valuable data to understand the recent Earth history. This work presents the bases to develop a national soil heritage inventory. This study was applied to Brazil that has a robust taxonomic system and a national soil database, which is a fundamental source of information. The inventory includes 384 pedosites with scientific value, considering the representativeness and rarity criteria. In addition, 220 pedosites were selected considering their importance for the Brazilian history of pedology, together with ex situ occurrences of soil heritage. ; The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics and the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Pole of the University of Minho are acknowledged for the support of the postdoctoral grant of the 1st author (Process IBGE no. 0001726.00000411/2019-09). This work is co-funded by Portuguese funds through FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology, project UIDB/04683/2020. We thank Marta Minussi Franco of IBGE for her support in the QGIS processing and Dr. José Francisco Lumbreras of Embrapa Solos, Rio de Janeiro, in the survey of data on RCCs.
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