116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Five years after 2020 derecho, Linn County tree canopy still recovering
Public-private partnerships have helped area entities weather the costs and challenges of necessary replanting
Aug. 10, 2025 5:30 am, Updated: Aug. 11, 2025 7:35 am
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With every tree planted in Linn County parks, Mitch Ahrendsen knows that he’s playing the long game.
Ahrendsen, natural resources manager with Linn County Conservation, is part of the team working to rebuild and restore the county woodlands damaged five years ago in the 2020 derecho, an ecological event unprecedented in both its swiftness and scale.
As strong winds tore across the region, the gusts downed hundreds of thousands of trees across east-central Iowa and decimated large swaths of the local tree canopy. The storm swept through in a matter of hours, but what was so quickly destroyed will take much longer to rebuild.
Still, local conservationists aren’t giving up, and tens of thousands of trees have already been replanted on public land across Linn County.
“Whether it’s us (at Linn County) or the other municipalities around us, everyone is doing a good job with replanting, but it’s a long-term vision,” Ahrendsen said. “We might never see all the fruits of our labor ourselves, but in 80 to 100 years, we’re going to have an awesome tree canopy.”
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources estimates that upward of 7 million trees were destroyed during the Aug. 10, 2020, derecho that brought wind speeds up to 140 mph to the Cedar Rapids area.
Nearly one million of those trees were felled in Linn County alone, and the damage left rural and urban communities alike with gaping holes in their tree canopies. Five years later, The Gazette is revisiting what’s been done to fill the gaps.
‘Disbelief’ marks early losses, but regrowth possible
Marion City Arborist Mike Cimprich still can recall the “surprise and disbelief” of first seeing the damage wrought by the derecho in 2020.
Very few of the city’s trees made it out unscathed, and Marion lost about 2,600 city-owned trees — more than 40 percent of its canopy — in the storm. The damages were even higher if accounting for trees on private property, although the city doesn’t have exact figures for those losses.
In addition to the ecological devastation, Cimprich said the aftermath came with logistical challenges such as transportation difficulties from downed trees or the lack of cellular communication and electricity.
“We (as a department) had to physically pick a route and cut our way to the next destination,” Cimprich said. “We quickly realized that if we couldn’t get anywhere, neither could anyone else — the fire department, police — so that community need became the priority very quickly.”
As such, city staff’s immediate focus was on clearing debris and reopening roadways. The initial clearing was quick enough, Cimprich said, but it was well over a year before the city could truly shift out of “clean up mode.”
“Then it was all about, ‘OK, what’s next? What’s our plan for replanting?’” Cimprich recalled.
The result was Marion’s urban reforestation plan, which received final approval from the City Council last fall. The plan calls for 35 percent citywide canopy cover by 2055, referencing the portion of the city shaded by trees when viewed from above.
The plan outlines steps toward that long-term goal, Cimprich said, but Parks & Recreation staff didn’t wait for its completion to start replanting. Since 2020, he said the department has planted roughly 8,000 trees on public property.
That figure accounts for public trees planted on city-owned property. It does not include trees that citizens have planted on their own private property.
“We’ve gone back in and tried to reforest with native trees and other desirable species that will be good for wildlife and ecosystem function, but also for longevity and canopy increase,” Cimprich said.
If the 35 percent canopy figure is achieved, it would be an overall increase from pre-derecho numbers with enough new planting to make up for the trees lost to the derecho and for the nearly 1,100 additional trees felled due to the invasive emerald ash borer.
Efforts focus on not just replacement, but expansion
The city of Cedar Rapids also is working toward “replacement and expansion” of its urban tree canopy, said ReLeaf program manager Carole Teator.
In total, the 2020 derecho decimated more than 65 percent of Cedar Rapids’ overall tree canopy. City staff reported the loss of at least 23,000 publicly-owned trees — a figure that grows exponentially when accounting for those lost on private land.
Decades-old trees were torn from their roots across the city, and once shaded streets found themselves with little to no tree cover.
“It’s remarkable how different streets look today than they did just five years ago,” Teator said. “I hear from a lot of people, especially if they've moved away, ‘I used to live here, but I don’t even recognize it anymore.’”
In the weeks after the storm, support poured in from across the country to remove debris. When all was said and done, the city reported that more than 4.2 million cubic yards of tree debris were hauled during the cleanup efforts.
To address the storm’s impacts to the urban forest, the city created ReLeaf Cedar Rapids as a public-private partnership between the city, the nonprofit Trees Forever, private landowners and other stakeholders.
The ReLeaf Cedar Rapids Plan calls for 42,500 trees to be planted on public land over 10 years, and further outlines steps to incentivize private plantings through community education and outreach. To date, the city has planted roughly 16,300 such trees with another 2,700 plantings planned this fall.
The ReLeaf plan has a focus on native species, Teator said, with an emphasis on planting shade trees where possible. However, shorter ornamental trees are sometimes used in city rights of way underneath power lines.
The focus has been on replacing trees lost during the derecho, but also to expand the canopy in areas of the city that already had less tree cover prior to the 2020 storm.
“Even before the derecho, the city had a goal of expanding our tree canopy,” Teator said. “Sometimes, I’ll get a question from a resident saying ‘Well, we didn’t have a tree there before the derecho,’ and that’s because it’s not just replacement. It’s about expansion.”
Replanting comes with costs, challenges
Such an undertaking does not come without its costs and challenges, however.
The ReLeaf plan alone has an estimated price tag of $37 million. The city has committed $1 million in city funds per year toward the 10-year effort with the remaining $27 million to be supported through fundraising and grant opportunities.
Teator said the city already has received nearly $10 million in federal grant money for its urban reforesting efforts, and work continues to identify additional funding sources and partnership opportunities moving forward.
Federal grants can come with certain regulations and timelines, she added, and therefore have shaped early planting patterns.
“We only have so much time to spend those funds,” Teator said. Because of the grant guidelines, “we’ve put a lot of focus the last year and a half on planting trees along streets and on the rights of way.”
Replanting efforts also face a host of logistical challenges, whether it be from variables like bad weather to more standard considerations such as natural tree mortality rates.
Teator said she expects anywhere from 5 to 15 percent of newly planted trees to perish based on standard mortality rates. Still more of the juvenile trees could be damaged by a particularly strong wind or fall victim to drought.
The city is able to recuperate some of those losses, however, based on the two-year warranty issued for each new tree. If the tree is damaged or dies within that window, Teator explained, it is replaced at no cost.
After that period, it’s folded into the city’s overall tree inventory and covered under the city’s Parks & Recreation budget.
At the county level, Ahrendsen noted that conservation department staff also have faced issues with sun-loving invasive species that have taken advantage of the woodlands once home to canopy-dense native tree species.
In those areas, Ahrendsen said clear cutting was necessary before replanting could truly begin.
“The tree canopy was taken down, and right after we saw a huge burst in invasive species like honeysuckle and autumn olive,” Ahrendsen said. “They really took advantage of all that extra sunlight and just exploded.”
The 2020 derecho had varying effects on county parks depending on the physical location of each, with Morgan Creek Park near Cedar Rapids and Wanatee Park near Marion seeing some of the hardest hits.
Over the past five years, Ahrendsen said staff have planted roughly 6,600 trees across the county park system with a focus on areas that were heaviest hit during the derecho. Still more plantings are scheduled for this fall.
Like both Marion and Cedar Rapids, the county is focused on planting native tree species. County staff also are focused on diversification, Ahrendsen added, to ensure that no one tree species dominates the canopy.
That has meant planting a mix of tree species of different heights and growing speeds with consideration given for those that best stand a chance of outcompeting invasive plants and rebuilding the county’s tree canopy over time.
“The best way to combat those invasive species is canopy closure, so we plant for that and plant these trees densely together," he said. “We want them to grow as quick as they can to close that canopy and shade out the invasives.”
Public-private collaboration key to recovery
Area leaders say public-private partnerships are an essential part of overcoming those challenges and helping rebuild the local tree canopy.
Ahrendsen noted that the county has collaborated with the Iowa DNR and several of the area municipalities on its own replanting efforts, as well as with nonprofit organizations and area volunteers.
Such partnerships are particularly useful, Ahrendsen said, in extending replanting efforts onto private properties.
The Marion-based nonprofit Monarch Research Project, for example, launched its “Planting Forward” program in the aftermath of the 2020 derecho. The program was created to facilitate replanting efforts and public education on proper tree care.
The nonprofit has since distributed 100,000 native trees for replanting in Linn County, and this fall, the organization hopes to distribute an additional 20,000 to 30,000 more.
“We have a very good and close relationship with” the Monarch Research Project, Ahrendsen said. “One of the biggest impacts we can make is on private property, and they’ve been great at trying to get people from the public to replant at home.”
The city of Cedar Rapids similarly maintains a close relationship with Trees Forever, an area nonprofit dedicated to community building through urban forestry and environmental stewardship. The nonprofit coordinates volunteer efforts for ReLeaf and largely handles related education, fundraising and outreach.
In addition to those organizations, Cimprich also recognized the efforts of everyday residents whose awareness of urban forestry has increased since the 2020 derecho.
While many residents recognized the aesthetic value of neighborhood trees, Cimprich said the derecho elevated residents’ awareness of the environmental and social benefits of a robust tree canopy such as improved air quality and cooling shade.
As derecho recovery efforts move forward, he expressed hope that such public interest and awareness will continue to grow alongside the saplings planted each year.
“Our tree canopy was something that was maybe taken for granted a little” before the derecho, Cimprich said. “Now we’ve seen this huge awareness around it … that has given us the ability to do a lot of outreach and form a lot of partnerships in the community” that we didn’t have before.
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