Climate change, extreme weather fluctuations and future of inhabitance and use in the Wasatch Mountain Range

Anthropogenic climate warming is occurring on a scale of exponential frequency. This climate change is a problem in and of itself as it permanently adjusts worldwide weather patterns and damages ecosystems essential to the function of our contemporary lives. This analysis will focus on the Wasatch Mountain Range as a high elevation ecosystem local to the Salt Lake City area and critical to its environmental, social and economic functions. Data from personally conducted fieldwork on the 2022/2023 season snowpack in Big Cottonwood Canyon and Little Cottonwood Canyon will be used to compare the impacts of extreme precipitation and extreme drought on this ecosystem. El Niño and La Niña Southern Oscillation will be discussed as it relates to anthropogenic warming and local weather patterns. Great Salt Lake lakebed settlements and their drought period exposure and atmospheric dispersion will be considered as a driving factor of ecosystem change. These environmental tenets will be measured against the conservative social and political climate in Salt Lake City, and a final analysis suggests methods of management for this environmental change amongst this large host of factors. These changes and damages are ultimately irreversible, and need to be approached with a methodology of adaptation as opposed to a methodology of reversal.