Long-Horizon Mining Subsidence Forecasting and Ecological Time-Lag Assessment Using Multi-Source Remote Sensing

Abstract

Surface deformation induced by underground coal mining is characterized by strong nonlinearity and spatial heterogeneity, which complicates early warning and ecological assessment. While InSAR-driven data assimilation models and remote sensing-based ecological indices are widely used for long-term monitoring, three fundamental limitations remain unresolved: (1) severe spatial imbalance in deformation samples biases data-driven models toward mean-reverting predictions, (2) recursive multi-step forecasting accumulates errors, leading to instability in long-horizon extrapolation, and (3) in ecological monitoring, vegetation resilience further induces a multi-year observation lag, resulting in a “pseudo-stable” bias in optical indicators. To address these issues, this study proposes an unified framework integrating multi-step deformation prediction and ecological time-lag analysis. Taking the Datong Coalfield as the study area, we utilized 231 Sentinel-1A images from March 2017 to December 2024 for SBAS-InSAR deformation inversion. A spatial stratified sampling strategy is used to extract 5894 representative points. A 24-step backward and 15-step forward windows were reconstructed to systematically compare six predictive models. Simultaneously, the Remote Sensing Ecological Index (RSEI) derived from Landsat data is used for cross-lagged analysis. The results demonstrate that: (1) The maximum deformation rate reached −276.75 mm/year, with cumulative subsidence exceeding −2000 mm. (2) At 3-step short-term forecasting, all models proved robust, with LSTM performing best (RMSE = 5.78 mm). At 15-step extreme extrapolation, however, traditional recursive models diverged significantly (Kalman, RMSE = 45.70 mm), whereas N-BEATS maintained stability and effectively mitigated temporal error cascades with an RMSE of 17.98 mm. (3) The core collapse zone exhibited concurrent ecological degradation (Lag 0), while the marginal basin presented a hidden degradation period of one to two years. It provides reliable scientific support for precise tracking and proactive safety management in complex mining areas.