SEKALA provides training and internships on Geographic Information Systems (GIS), satellite image processing, remote sensing, spatial planning, REDD+ and community mapping to various stakeholders, including government officials, Non Government Organisations (NGOs), private enterprise and local communities.

Some of these training workshops aim to initiate discussion among civil society and local forestry offices about data availability, data inconsistencies, information sharing mechanisms, standards, metadata and analysis.

Community mapping is a tool that allows customary people to map their land and forest resources in a participatory way. It can also be used to mediate land use conflicts and to provide an avenue for stakeholders to negotiate and agree upon spatial plans and customary boundaries.

SEKALA has provided community mapping support in Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Sumatra and Papua. It has also helped to improve community mapping methodologies and to support community mapping networks throughout the archipelago.

Fire is commonly used in Indonesia to clear land for swidden agriculture and large-scale oil palm developments. While fires can be contained they have often become widespread and damaging. SEKALA collects satellite and spatial data on forest and land fires and is able to provide ground-truthed data on fire hotspots. SEKALA also analyses this data to develop realistic strategies that can be used to reduce forest fires in Indonesia.

Conflicts over natural resource use and management are common in Indonesia as large-scale concession boundaries often overlap with customary lands. SEKALA uses conflict mediation, community mapping, and other services to help to resolve these conflicts.

For instance, SEKALA has worked together with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and an industrial timber plantation company (PT MHP) in South Sumatra to analyse and to help to resolve land conflict arising with local communities living in the PT MHP concession area.