Teaching in the specialty of soil and water conservation and desertification control faces challenges such as limited practical teaching resources, restricted experimental sites, and long observation cycles. This study explores the innovative strategy of applying virtual simulation technology to the teaching reform of soil and water conservation and desertification control specialty. By constructing a virtual laboratory organizational structure with vertical support and horizontal openness, a multifunctional virtual simulation experimental teaching platform is established to optimize the teaching of soil and water conservation and desertification control professional courses. The research adopts coordinate system design, basic transformation, data resource library and illumination technology to construct the virtual scene, and optimizes the experimental scene through the fusion of binary projection image generation and significant feature extraction. The experimental evaluation adopts the method of pre and post-test comparison and independent sample t-test, and the experimental class and control class students are selected to carry out a semester-long teaching experiment. The results show that the average value of students’ practical ability posttest score in the experimental class under virtual simulation teaching is 53.19 points, which is 6.43 points higher than that of 46.76 points in the control class (P<0.001); the average score of the course after the teaching reform is increased to 84.63 points, which is 7.26 points higher than that before the reform; the students' enhancement is most significant in the dimension of information and technological literacy, with a difference of 1.7 points (P<0.001). The experiment proves that the teaching mode of soil and water conservation and desertification control specialty based on virtual simulation technology can effectively improve students' practical ability and learning interest, and provides an effective way to solve the problems of limited practical teaching resources and long observation period in traditional teaching.
