Studies have shown that the acoustic signals used by birds are increasingly masked by traffic noise. Masking of signals important to territory defence and mate attraction may have a negative impact on reproductive success, and may ultimately exclude species from suitable breeding habitat. This study looks at the impact which traffic noise has on Woodpecker abundance by analyzing how the number of nesting cavities differ between areas subject to different levels of disturbance, based on the assumption that the greater the number of observable cavities, the greater the abundance of Woodpeckers within that particular area.

Six forest areas in the Ville (Bruehl, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany) belonging to the old forest, the old and the younger recultivation parcels were analyzed in this study regarding gastropod species richness and abundance. It is hypothesized that the reclaimed forests have not yet attained original conditions, lacking for example stenoecious forest species, but that the gastropod assemblages from old reclamations slowly approach that of the old-growth sites.