Soil and water conservation is an important part of national ecological civilization construction, and the division of soil and water conservation spatial control area is the prerequisite and key to scientific planning and effective management of soil and water loss regions. However, research on regional division of soil and water conservation control has not formed a mature spatial delineation method, and the division of soil and water conservation space is mostly based on administrative boundaries, and there are few studies on the spatial control of soil and water conservation based on small watershed. In order to explore new methods of spatial control zoning for soil and water conservation and implement differentiated protection and management measures, in this study, USLE model was used to calculate potential and actual soil erosion, and the main influencing factors of soil erosion were determined by random forest. Self-organizing feature map (SOFM) was used to determine the spatial control zone of soil and water conservation in Dabie Mountain area on the small catchment scale. The results showed that: 1) the average potential soil erosion in Dabie Mountain area was 84415.7 t/(km2·a), and the average actual soil erosion was 210.25 t/(km2·a). The actual soil erosion at the small watershed scale is mainly distributed in 0～300 t/(km2·a), and the potential soil erosion is mainly distributed in 600～300000 t/(km2·a). The spatial pattern distribution of potential and actual soil erosion was basically the same at the small watershed scale, and the high value area was mainly distributed in the central and eastern mountain area with higher elevation. 2) Vegetation coverage and slope were the main influencing factors of potential and actual soil erosion at the small watershed scale, and were significantly positively correlated with potential soil erosion (P＜0.01). The high vegetation cover area is mainly distributed in the hinterland of Dabie Mountain area, and the high slope area extends from west to east along the ridgeline of Dabie Mountain. 3) SOFM results showed that the spatial control zone of soil and water conservation in Dabie Mountain was divided into three area: key prevention area, general prevention area and other area at the small watershed scale, among which the key prevention area involves 710 small watersheds with an area of 15287.4 km2. There are 890 small watersheds in the general prevention area, covering an area of 18874.4 km2. Key prevention areas and general prevention areas accounted for 61.2% of the study area. The difference of actual soil erosion, potential soil erosion and slope among different regions is obvious, which can be used as the main classification index of spatial control of soil and water conservation in Dabie Mountains. The research results provide a new idea for soil and water conservation spatial control regionalization, and can provide theoretical support and decision-making basis for regional spatial control of soil and water conservation.