Coordinated and sustainable development of production-living-ecological space (PLES) is directly related to the global energy security and quality of life in coal areas. However, the current surface subsidence control methods have some problems, such as low resource recovery rate, high cost, insufficient materials, which are difficult to meet the requirements for the PLES sustainable development in coal areas. Under this background, based on characteristics of surface subsidence and deformation due to sub-critical extraction, the large protection area, and high deformation tolerance in PLES of mining areas, the new method of regional mining subsidence control was proposed, with the combination of source control and ground rehabilitation. The effectiveness of the method was verified by numerical simulation results and practical applications, and the application principles and implementation methods were proposed. The research results could provide technical support for the sustainable development of coal areas in major coal producing countries of the world.

The anti-compression capability of gangue affects the controlling effect of coal mining with gangue backfilling obviously. Meanwhile, the anti-compression capability of gangue depends on their gradation characteristics. Taking the filling gangue of backfilling mining face No. 1603 in Jisan coal mine as a case study, an in-situ experiment is conducted with the gangue of underground mine by sieving method, and the composition characteristic of the gangue is obtained. Based on this, gangue gradation is optimized by continuous gradation theory. The result shows that 1) the original gangue has a clear gradation flaw: with a high content of large-sized particles and a low content of small-sized particles; 2) the gangue after continuous gradation has a better anti-compression than original ones; and 3) when the index of Talbol formula is 0.4, the anti-compression capability is the best, with an increase of 21% compared to the original gangue.