Spatial Lock‐In and Reclamation Delay in Coal‐Subsidence Landscapes: Land Degradation Under Passive Water‐Retention Strategies

ABSTRACT In coal‐grain composite regions, intensive underground coal extraction causes large‐scale surface subsidence; under shallow groundwater conditions, these subsided landscapes rapidly transform former croplands into persistent open water bodies, creating long‐term inundated landscapes. Passive water‐retention strategies in these areas often rely on static land‐use reclassification, treating newly inundated areas as wetland conversions rather than ongoing degradation trajectories. This classification overlooks the multidecadal loss of agricultural carrying capacity and obscures the temporal constraints imposed on cropland restoration. Persistent inundation accelerates the depletion of reclamation materials and progressively reduces the physical feasibility of cropland recovery. This study characterizes the spatial lock‐in and temporal penalties produced by passive water retention, combining exploratory modeling, a succession‐dynamics model, and a physically constrained subsidence projection (Probability Integral Method) for a representative high‐groundwater coal mine. Results demonstrate that successional recovery in subsidence‐affected landscapes extends well beyond administrative compliance windows, and that severe physical disturbance undermines the functional land‐use transitions assumed under static policy frameworks. Spatial simulations reveal that delayed reclamation sharply compresses the recoverable land base and accelerates the exhaustion of usable soil resources, with extractable substrate declining by 86.0% over a 10‐year projection window. These dynamics demonstrate that passive water retention creates a path‐dependent spatial lock‐in that progressively reduces the feasibility of subsequent cropland restoration. The findings support concurrent mining and reclamation (CMR) as a structural response and highlight the need for governance instruments that explicitly account for reclamation timing in achieving Land Degradation Neutrality.