William P. Cunningham

William P. Cunningham is an emeritus professor at the University of Minnesota. In his 38-year career at the university, he taught a variety of biology courses, including Environmental Science, Conservation Biology, Environmental Health, Environmental Ethics, Plant Physiology, General Biology, and Cell Biology. He is a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers, the highest teaching award granted at the University of Minnesota. He was a member of a number of interdisciplinary programs for international students, teachers, and nontraditional students. He also carried out research or taught in Sweden, Norway, Brazil, New Zealand, China, and Indonesia.

Professor Cunningham has participated in a number of governmental and nongovernmental organizations over the past 40 years. He was chair of the Minnesota chapter of the Sierra Club, a member of the Sierra Club national committee on energy policy, vice president of the Friends of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, chair of the Minnesota governor’s task force on energy policy, and a citizen member of the Minnesota Legislative Commission on Energy.

In addition to environmental science textbooks, Cunningham edited three editions of an Environmental Encyclopedia published by Thompson-Gale Press. He has also authored or co-authored about 50 scientific articles, mostly in the fields of cell biology and conservation biology as well as several invited chapters or reports in the areas of energy policy and environmental health. His Ph.D. from the University of Texas was in botany.

His hobbies include backpacking, canoe and kayak building (and paddling), birding, hiking, gardening, and traveling. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with his wife, Mary. He has three children (one of whom is co-author of this book) and seven grandchildren.

Mary Ann Cunningham

Mary Ann Cunningham is an assistant professor of geography at Vassar College, in New York’s Hudson Valley. A biogeographer with interests in landscape ecology, geographic information systems (GIS), and remote sensing, she teaches environmental science, natural resource conservation, and land-use planning, as well as GIS and remote sensing. Field research methods, statistical methods, and scientific methods in data analysis are regular components of her teaching. As a scientist and educator, Mary Ann enjoys teaching and conducting research with both science students and non-science liberal arts students. As a geographer, she likes to engage students with the ways their physical surroundings and social context shape their world experience. In addition to teaching at a liberal arts college, she has taught at community colleges and research universities.

Mary Ann has been writing in environmental science for over a decade, and she has been co-author of this book since its first edition. She is also co-author of Environmental Science (now in its tenth edition), and an editor of the Environmental Encyclopedia (third edition, Thompson-Gale Press). She has published work on pedagogy in cartography, as well as instructional and testing materials in environmental science. With colleagues at Vassar, she has published a GIS lab manual, Exploring Environmental Science with GIS, designed to provide students with an easy, inexpensive introduction to spatial and environmental analysis with GIS.

In addition to environmental science, Mary Ann’s primary research activities focus on land-cover change, habitat fragmentation, and distributions of bird populations. This work allows her to conduct field studies in the grasslands of the Great Plains as well as in the woodlands of the Hudson Valley. In her spare time she loves to travel, hike, and watch birds.

Mary Ann holds a bachelor’s degree from Carleton College, a master’s degree from the University of Oregon, and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.