The geographical setting, geology, mineralogy, climate, soil, and hydro-graphic factors, together with prolonged anthropogenic interventions, have created a specific territory, with a habitat that has a remarkable botanical diversity.
The Rosia Montana mining landscape is characterized by a distinctive mosaic, created by the types of land use: both mining and agro-pastoral practices, the last taking place on high plateaus and steep slopes. The landscape is composed by rocky natural massifs dotted with metalliferous remains, former header ponds on higher altitudes, forests (coniferous and deciduous trees), mountain pastures and meadows, orchards, interleaved with small plots of arable land and with the human settlements. In Rosia Montana, these settlements have a gathered structure, in certain areas even dense, while in the neighboring villages, it is scattered or rarefied.
The human intervention in this landscape is of a smaller intensity when compared to other similar areas in the Apuseni Mountains. Thus, the meadows, orchards and pastures continuously maintained through traditional practices are extremely beneficial for the richness of plant species; they form natural and semi-natural ecosystems with vegetation and flora with a high natural value, comprising important groups of plants listed as priority habitats in Annex 1 of the EU Habitats 92/43 EEC Directive, as well as rare and vulnerable plants mentioned on the Romanian Red List of plants and on the 2003 Romanian Meadow Inventory.
