Abstract: Coal mining area was already familiar to people,but few literature devoted to its connotation and denotation.Defining the concept,clearing the spatial scope and mastering the basic characteristics are the basic premise of coal mining area research.The connotation and denotation of "Coal mining area" was analyzed with logic theory,aiming to redress the awareness dislocation of coal mining area concept,namely the connotation and denotation of coal mining area was vague caused by the objective objects and reflects in the human brain were identically treated.The denotation of coal mining area should be the object class reflected by the connotation.But in practice,the scope of coal mining area was different due to different study objectives and conditions.In this study,the scope of coal mining area was analyzed based on the perspective of Spatial and temporal,and was defined according to different objectives,such as coal production management,resources property management,ecological environment and socio-economy.Finally,this study summarized the basic characteristics of the coal mining area.