Ecological risk assessment in mining areas is a hotspot and frontier of regional ecological risk researches. At present, how to rationally select and quantify multiple regional ecological risk sources, receptors and their relationships have been the key issues of regional ecological risk assessment studies. Based on the relative ecological risk assessment researches in mining areas, this paper established the cause-effect chain analysis model from ecological risk incentives, sources, receptors to the ecological effect objects and processes, summarized the specificity of environmental problems, and reasonably took the destructed lands by mining activities as the original ecological risk sources, such as the subsided land caused by underground mining, the excavated land caused by open-pit mining, and various occupied lands caused by the mining dumps and tailings. On the basis of the definition and description of the land destruction, the ecological risk assessment procedure, indicator system and method suitable for the mining areas were proposed. The main contents include defining the boundary of mining areas, identifying and interpreting land destruction types, quantifying the degree and probability of multiple destructed lands, evaluating the integrated ecological losing degree of ecosystem units by the ecological niche and vulnerability index, and quantifying the coupling relationship between the land destruction and ecosystem units. The quantitative method of the coupling relationship was especially discussed in this paper, which included the spatial exposure chance index of ecosystem units and the spatial cumulative effect index of multiple land destructions based on the geographic information system (GIS). In summary, this paper developed an operational ecological risk assessment framework and calculation model for mining areas. The more ecological risk assessment case studies of mining areas will be carried out, and the proposed ecological risk assessment method will be practiced and improved in the future research, which are helpful for promoting the ecological security and sustainable development in mining areas.