Vegetation restoration serves as a fundamental approach to ecological rehabilitation in mining areas. Seed ger-mination, which determines the initiation of plant life cycles, plays a crucial role in this process. The ecological niche of seeds critically influences their successful germination and subsequent establishment in harsh habitats. This study focused on Medicago sativa, Cynodon dactylon and Lolium perenne, as the research objects. Artificial sim-ulation experiments were conducted to examine the effects of stress on seed germination, and Central Composite Design (CCD) was used for experimental design and two factor analysis of variance to construct a response model of seed germination to hydrothermal stress. The ecological niche width of germination was quantified, and its guiding significance of vegetation restoration in mining areas was explored. The results showed that the three plant seeds germination response models established using response surface methodology had statistical significance (P<0.05). The validation showwd that the model has good fitting and high prediction accuracy (R2>0.85), and the average absolute error (MAE) index was less than 20%, and the accuracy of Cynodon dactylon model was the highest. All Willmott’s index of agreement (WI) values exceeded 0.85, while the Kappa coefficients for all species surpassed 0.6, except for Medicago sativa (0.43). By comparing Levins' index with Shannon's index, it was found that Levins' index can more accurately quantify the width of sprouting States, and was highly consistent with the threshold of 95% effective sprouting states. Among the three plants, bermudagrass showed the widest niche under high temperature stress (temperature width 11.31℃, Levins index 4723.13), which was significantly better than alfalfa and ryegrass. Lolium perenne has a wider ecological niche under water stress (?w=10.61%). The effective moisture widths of Medicago sativa, Cynodon dactylon, and Lolium perenne were determined to be 9.21%, 9.9%, and 10.61%, respectively, with corresponding effective temperature widths measuring 9.9°C, 11.31°C, and 6.37°C. Therefore, C. dactylon had a more significant advantage in germination success as a preferred restoration plant species under high temperature stress environment. These findings contributed to the selection of plant species for ecological niche restoration based on germination responses to stress in harsh mining areas and provide guidance on seed management and germination strategies post-sowing, thereby improving the success rate of ecological restoration.