Grappling with systemic discrimination and bias in geosciences can be overwhelming to the point that one may feel powerless to fix them. Despite the sweeping nature of this challenge, faculty, principal investigators, and other scientists with leadership roles have unparalleled power to mitigate harm in environments they oversee. Here, we identify ways that scientists in these roles can immediately address bias in three common spaces --- the lab, field, and classroom. We highlight key actions that can be taken to improve the quality of life of marginalized students and other trainees quickly, while important but comparatively slow institutional changes proceed.

Episodic tremor and slow slip (ETS) downdip of the subduction seismogenic zone are poorly understood slip behaviors of the seismic cycle. Talc, a common metasomatic mineral at the subduction interface, is suggested to host slow slip but this hypothesis has not been tested in the rock record. We investigate actinolite microstructures from talc-bearing and talc-free rocks exhumed from the depths of modern ETS (Pimu’nga/Santa Catalina Island, California). Actinolite deformed by dissolution-reprecipitation creep in the talc-free rock and dislocation creep ± cataclasis in the talc-bearing rock. This contrast results from stress amplification in the talc-bearing rock produced by high strain rates in surrounding weak talc. We hypothesize that higher strain rates in the talc-bearing sample represent episodic slow slip, while lower strain rates in the talc-free sample represent intervening aseismic creep. This work highlights the need to consider fluid-mediated chemical change in studies of subduction zone deformation and seismicity.