For a good portion of her classroom work, Deirdre Loughnan’s study hall becomes a little like this scene in Sequim’s Pioneer Park. With a thick, towering canopy of Garry oak trees providing shade from a brilliant summer sun, she and fellow University of British Columbia student Lukas Jarron leaf through oak leaves.

On a previous excursion into the Pacific Northwest and various pockets of Garry oak stands on Vancouver Island, she collected insects and looks for tell-tale signs of what she calls “damage,” but here, on a late August day in Sequim, she’s simply gathering a random number of leaves she hopes will tell a story the trees cannot.

The Toronto native said she doesn’t have oaks where she lives, but it’s clear the Garry oak has worked a kind of spell on the UBC graduate student.

“It’s one of the few ecosystems being conserved for their intrinsic value,” she said.

The species she’s studying — Quercus garryana, also known as the Oregon white oak or Oregon oak or, familiarly on the Olympic Peninsula, the Garry oak — is a familiar one to Sequim natives and other tree aficionados alike. Sequim Prairie Garden Club members proudly protect a grove of Garry oaks in Pioneer Memorial Park and the trees are found in a few small stands throughout Sequim, including a large stand near U.S. Highway 101 and South Sequim Avenue.

Loughnan’s field studies that started this May have taken her to about 20 different Garry oak groves, from Medford, Ore., (they are sometimes found as far south as Southern California) north to Courtenay, B.C., on the eastern side of central Vancouver Island. She said she found the groves through a variety of sources, from online blogs to national forest websites to simply searching the Internet.

“It’s definitely one of the bigger (groves of Garry oaks),” Loughnan said of Pioneer Park’s oaks, though she notes that Oregon boasts more wild Garry oaks and bigger collections of them, particularly in savannas.

In May, Loughnan collected insects and leaves — more insects at that time, such as moth larvae, beetles, aphids and the occasional odd one like snake fly larvae — but, in Sequim as part of a three-week trek in August, it was all about the leaves. The goal, she said, is a random sampling of leaves to examine insect damage and how that changes across latitudes.

Among the evidence of insect infestations are what are called galls, or growths that occur on leaves, twigs or branches forming where insects or mites feed or lay eggs. Galls, which also can be a response to infections from kinds of fungi, bacteria and viruses, can be as large as apples.

In late summer, Loughnan and Jarron are collecting random samples for chemical analysis in a lab.

There should be more damage to Garry oak leaves in the southern parts of region, Loughnan said, but migration and changes to insect species may be telling a different story. Climate changes and rain — or lack thereof — can make a difference in the results she gets.

Growing as tall as 100 feet or as small as about 10 feet in maturity, Garry oaks are the habitat for numerous creatures, including the Western gray squirrel, Western bluebird, Lewis woodpecker, a species of leaf-mining moth, the Propertius duskywing butterfly and the sharp-tailed snake.

The drought-tolerant Garry oak has not been seen traditionally as a valuable commodity, however, and is frequently destroyed as land is cleared for development. According to the Nature Conservancy, more than half the Garry oak woodland habitat in the South Puget Sound area of Washington was gone by the 1990s; on Vancouver Island, that number rose to 90 percent, according to a 2006 Canadian Forestry Service report.

But Garry oaks and corresponding ecosystems are the focus of numerous conservation efforts in the U.S. and Canada. In Oak Bay, B.C., a fine of up to $10,000 may be issued for each Garry oak tree cut or damaged.

That kind of conservancy appeals to the Canadian student. Loughnan begins her laboratory work this fall and said she hopes to start her thesis next spring — if data is complete. There are several practical applications for her studies, Loughnan noted, but everything rests on what the lab tests reveal.

“Data influences what you can and cannot do,” she said.