Mary Ann Cunningham

Associate Professor of Geography

Mary Ann Cunningham is interested in the structure and function of landscapes, and in how changing landscapes influence habitat availability, especially for birds. She also studies the ways landscape change influences environmental quality and water quality. In classes, she also examines aesthetic landscapes, which connect us to our surroundings. Her research focuses on how landscape composition affects the quality and availability of habitat, as well as impervious cover effects on water quality in the Casperkill creek, on the Vassar campus, and in other Hudson Valley watersheds. This work has allowed collaboration with students and colleagues across campus.

Mary Ann teaches courses in conservation, land use planning, mapping, and related aspects of environmental and physical geography. Most of her courses involve some components of GIS, environmental inquiry, and field experience (as much as possible). Her courses have focused on topics such as historic landscapes and exploration, conservation history in the Adirondack Park, and the intersection of aesthetic landscapes and environmental planning on the Vassar Campus; she also teaches Cartography, GIS, remote sensing, and research methods.

In addition to research and teaching, she is coauthor, with her father William P. Cunningham, on two environmental science text books: Environmental Science: a Global Concern, and Principles of Environmental Science. Their aim with these books are to give students access to ideas about how science is used to examine and ideally to resolve environmental problems, as well as how human, cultural, and political factors give nuance to environmental issues and solutions. Ideas from these books are folded in to most of her teaching and research, as well. For related web sites, see EnviromentalScience-Cunningham.blogspot.com, and www.mhhe.com/Cunningham5e.

Before doing her PhD in Minnesota, Mary Ann spent formative time in Alaska and northern Canada and earned her MA in Geography in Eugene, Oregon.

Courses

Geography 115: Reading the Landscape: Exploration, Travel, and Sense of Place

Environmental Studies/Geography: Seeing the Landscape

Geography 220: Cartography: Making Maps with GIS

Geography/Earth Science 224: GIS: Spatial Analysis

Geography/Earth Science 226: Remote Sensing

Geography 230: Research Methods

Geography/Earth Science 240: Food and Farming:From Local Food to Biofuels

Geography/Earth Science 260: Conservation of Natural Resources

Geography/Earth Science/Environmental Studies 355: Environment and Land Use Planning

Geography/Earth Science/Environmental Studies 384: Arctic Environmental Change

Selected Publications

Cunningham, M.A. and C.M. Foley, (in review). Can we use regional impervious cover data for landscape analysis? Submitted to Professional Geographer.

Cunningham, M.A. and D.H. Johnson (in press). Landscape metrics: clearing the confusion. Journal of Wildlife Management.

Cunningham, M.A., Menking, K.M., Gillikin, D.P., Smith, K.C., Freimuth, C., Belli, S.L., Pregnall, A.M., Schlessman, M.A. and Batur, P. 2010. Influence of open space on water quality in an urban stream. Physical Geography 31, 4, 336-356.

Cunningham, W.P. and Cunningham, M.A. 2010. Principles of Environmental Science, (6e). New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Cunningham, M.A., O’Reilly, C.M., Menking, K.M., Gillikin, D.P., Smith, K.C., Foley, C.M. Belli, S.L., Pregnall, A.M., Schlessman, M.A. and Batur, P. 2009. The Suburban stream syndrome: Evaluating land use and stream impairments in the suburbs. Physical Geography, 30, 3, pp. 269–284.

Menking, K., Cunningham, M.A., et al., 2009. Health of
the Casperkill, Dutchess
County,
New
York. Cornell
 Cooperative
 Extension 
(CCEDC)
 Environment
 Program.

Cunningham, W.P., Cunningham, M.A. 2009. Environmental Science: A Global Concern (11e). Dubuque: McGraw-Hill.

Cunningham, M.A., E. Snyder, D. Yonkin, M. Ross, and T. Elsen.2008. Accumulation of deicing salts in ssoils in an urban environment. Urban Ecosystems.

Cunningham, M.A., and D.H. Johnson. 2007. Birds respond more to large landscapes than to “islands.” Proceedings of the International Association for Landscape Ecology 25th Annual Meeting, Wageningen, the Netherlands.

Cunningham, M.A., D.H. Johnson, and D.A. Svingen 2006. Estimates of Breeding Bird Populations in the Sheyenne National Grassland, North Dakota. The Prairie Naturalist 38(1): 39-61.

Cunningham, M.A., 2006. Accuracy assessment of digitized and classified land cover data for wildlife habitat. Landscape and Urban Planning, 78(3): 217-228.

Cunningham, M.A., and D.H. Johnson. 2006: Proximate And Landscape Factors Influence Grassland Bird Distributions. Ecological Applications: Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 1062-1075.

Cunningham, M.A. 2006. A primer on prairie ecology (book review). Prairie Naturalist.

Cunningham, M.A. and M.E. Stewart, M.E. 2006. GIS technology at a small liberal arts college: The importance of administrative support. In press, Transformations (online journal).

Cunningham, M.A. 2005.Why geography still needs pen and ink cartography. Journal of Geography. 104(3): 119-126.

Cunningham, M.A. 2005. A comparison of public lands and farmlands for grassland bird conservation. Professional Geographer 57(1):51-65.

Recent Conference Papers

Breaking the rules: can we use ISC data for landscape analysis? Middle States regional meeting of the AAG: New Paltz, NY November 2009

Landscape context influences proximate-scale habitat selection. The Wildlife Society National meeting, Monterey, CA September 2009

Kirsten M. Menking, Mary Ann Cunningham, and Catherine M. Foley. Mass Balance of Chloride from Deicing Salts in Small Hudson River Tributary. First International Road Salt Conference, Waterloo, Ont. May 2009.

Linking habitat responses across scales: birds are pickier in a tight spot. Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, Las Vegas, NV. April 2009.

Birds respond to large landscapes more than to "islands." Internatinal Association for Landscape Ecology. Wageningen, the Netherlands. July 2007

Earth Science and Geography at Vassar College

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