WALL STREET JOURNAL AWARD and INTERVIEW   In 2007, the Wall Street Journal recognized the importance of land imprinting by selecting The  Imprinting Foundation for an Innovation Award presented at a conference in  Redwood, California (Wall Street Journal 2007).   The series of award application questions asked by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and The Imprinting  Foundation (TIF) responses briefly summarize the development of land imprinting during the past 30 years. This  series follows: Web Design by Thumbs Up Production

•  WSJ: What, briefly, is your innovation?  TIF : Land imprinting is a new method and machine that is directed to reversing the world's number one environmental problem:  land desertification or degradation (also global warming). •  WSJ: What is the current situation in the field in which your innovation appears?  TIF: Land imprinting has already restored vegetation on more than 40,000 hectares (100 thousand acres) of degraded land in the  Desert Southwest where it's the only method that always works. But where imprinting has to compete with the well institutionalized  seed drills in more humid regions, the new idea has been difficult to introduce. •  WSJ: What is the problem with this situation that your innovation is seeking to address?  TIF: Land imprinting reverses global land desertification, land degradation, and global warming by restoring the hydrological  properties of the soil surface-micro-roughness and macro-porosity-to rehydrate the degraded soil for vegetation establishment and  atmospheric CO 2 reduction.  •  WSJ: How does your innovation address this situation?  TIF : Land imprinters wedge one-foot-square, V-shaped, closed micro-watersheds into the degraded soil surface that funnel  rainwater, seeds, plant litter, and splash-eroded soil together where they can work in concert to germinate seeds, establish  seedlings and grow plants. Thus, the success of imprints in re-vegetation projects is because of the superior management of water at the soil surface.  •  WSJ: What is particularly novel or noteworthy about your innovation?  TIF : Land imprinting wedges seedbeds into the degraded surface without soil surface inversion. Each imprint is a closed micro-  watershed that can hold a gallon of water that, in turn, increases water infiltration at least ten-fold. Imprinting is unexcelled in soil  and water conservation for ensuring success of re-vegetation projects.