Rate My Professor Jason Briner

Jason Briner serves as Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University at Buffalo, having joined the institution in 2005 as Assistant Professor, advancing to Associate Professor in 2010, and achieving full professorship in 2017. His academic journey includes a Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2003, with a dissertation titled 'The Last Glaciation of the Clyde Region, Northeastern Baffin Island, Arctic Canada: Cosmogenic Isotope Constraints on Laurentide Ice Sheet Dynamics and Chronology.' He previously obtained an M.S. in Geology from Utah State University in 1998, focusing on 'Late Pleistocene Glacial Chronology of the Western Ahklun Mountains, SW Alaska,' and a B.S. in Geological Sciences from the University of Washington in 1996, with a senior thesis on erosion constraints using inherited 36Cl in the Puget Lowland, Washington.

Briner's scholarly pursuits lie in the broad field of Quaternary geology and global climate change. He examines glacial settings to elucidate ice sheet processes, glacial landscape evolution, and past glacier fluctuations, while also analyzing paleoenvironments recorded in Holocene and Pleistocene lake sediments to contextualize paleoclimate as a template for modern global change. His specialties are Quaternary and glacial geology, paleoclimatology, and Arctic environmental change. Directing the Paleoclimate Lab, he has produced key publications such as 'Rate of mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet will exceed Holocene values this century' (Nature, 2020), 'GISP2 bedrock reveals extended periods of ice-free Greenland during the Pleistocene' (Nature, 2016), 'Glacial erosion and history of Inglefield Land, northwest Greenland' (The Cryosphere, 2025), 'The configuration of the Scandinavian Ice Sheet in southern Norway during the Younger Dryas' (Norwegian Journal of Geology, 2023), 'Drill site selection for cosmogenic-nuclide exposure dating of the bed of the Greenland Ice Sheet' (The Cryosphere, 2022), and 'Holocene Glaciation in the Americas' (Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science, 2025). Briner instructs courses including ERT 102 Climate Change, ERT 312 Surface Processes and Hydrology I, ERT 445/545 Glacial Geology, ERT 453/553 Quaternary Dating and Paleoclimate, and ERT 478/578 Advanced Field Methods: Alaska’s Changing Glacial Landscapes. He maintains memberships in the Geological Society of America, American Quaternary Association, and American Geophysical Union.