Soil, water, and precious metals are major natural resources present at the Earth´s terrestrial surface and their efficient management is essential for future sustainable development. Their availability is regulated by massive biogeochemical transformations that take place as the chemical elements move from rock to soil, into plants, through ground water, into river water, and into ore deposits. These precious resources are currently being exploited to an extent that is unprecedented in the history of our planet. We will make use of recent technological advances, in the form of novel mass-spectrometric methods, that have the as-yet unrealised capacity to make fundamental advances in understanding the formation of these resources. The understanding developed with these new tools will ultimately guide the sustainable exploitation of Earth surface environments. We will train young researchers in these ISOtopic tools as NOvel Sensors of Earth surface resources (IsoNose) through this European Initial Training Network. Long-term collaboration to train this new generation of scientists will be initiated by instrument manufacturers, academic specialists in method development and applications, private sector participants from the environmental, material certification, and metal ore resources fields. The researchers will use IsoNose as a platform to lead this emerging field into new areas, including the geosciences, environmental forensics, biomedical sciences, and mineral resource prospecting.