Will sprinting increase my cardiovascular endurance?

Yes, sprinting can improve your cardiovascular endurance but may not be the ideal choice, especially when starting an exercise program. Cardiovascular endurance consists of maintaining an increased heart rate for a sustained period of time, which will you will not be able to do when sprinting, because sprinting is too intense. However it will allow you to improve your intensity levels. If you want to incorporate sprinting into your cardio training for endurance, you should do so in an interval training fashion. This can be accomplished after you have developed an aerobic base, (or baseline level of fitness). At this point, you will incorporate short bouts of intense intervals of 80 - 85% of heart rate max (HRmax) and then recover at 65 - 75% (HRmax). Once you are able to recover in less and less time, you can then progress to greater intensity intervals of 86 - 90% of your maximum heart rate (for about one minute), then reduce the workload to 80 -85% HRmax and then finally recover at the lower intensity of 65 - 75% HRmax.

Yes. Although, you will need to develop a cardio base first with low intensity cardio training. Once you have a base where you can maintain a run, sprints (short bursts of up to one minute of high speed running) can increase type II muscle fiber which will positively impact your cardio capacity.