A full-featured research platform built specifically for how cavers actually work — in the field, offline, and across organizations.
The map is the center of the platform. Topo quads, karst geology, LiDAR hillshade, land ownership, sinkhole databases — stack as many layers as you need. Overlay your own GPX tracks, draw areas of interest, and view every cave you have access to.
The extraction pipeline reads your uploads and pulls out every cave name, coordinate, depth, length, species observation, and person name it finds. PDFs, scanned documents, trip reports, survey bulletins, CSV files, shapefiles, KML — all processed automatically. Results are flagged for human review before being linked to site records.
No query syntax to learn. Type what you mean — the platform figures out the rest.
Install The KEEP on your phone as a web app. Sites, documents, and photos cache locally so you can pull up a field card at the entrance with no signal. Log observations with GPS autofill — coordinates, photos, notes. Everything syncs when you get back in range.
The classification system covers everything from genesis type to surface morphology to condition flags — aligned with UIS and ASTM D8512-23 standards.
Every export is scoped to your access level. Sites you can't see aren't in the file. All exports are audit-logged.
When you enter a cave or upload a document, The KEEP cross-references it against 121 external databases, every uploaded document, and every existing site record — automatically. Different name, slightly different coordinates? It still finds the match.
Enter a cave name and coordinates, upload a PDF trip report, import a GPX track, or drop in a scanned survey map.
Fuzzy name matching, proximity search, and automated confirmation finds connections across sources. "Bear Hollow Cave" matches "Bear Hollow Cavern."
Every source that mentions the site — linked. Depth from a 1987 newsletter. Coordinates from a 2003 USGS report. Your 2024 GPS reading. All together.
Nothing gets overwritten. Every claim keeps its source, author, and date. The full history is always there.
When you add a cave, The KEEP automatically cross-references it against a large catalog of external cave registries, scientific databases, state GIS sources, international registries, and publication archives. No manual lookup required.
Major biodiversity, occurrence, and open-access scientific repositories covering species observations, geological surveys, and academic publications.
State karst inventories, sinkhole databases, and ArcGIS/WMS sources from agencies across the US — automatically queried by location.
Cave registries from over a dozen countries, covering hundreds of thousands of documented caves across Europe, Latin America, and beyond.
Data from regional and national caving organizations, survey groups, and cave research foundations — aggregated and de-duplicated.
Cave diving registries, bat and biota databases, speleothem records, specimen collections, and incident archives.
Karst journals, historical expedition reports, cenote databases, and deep-web publication archives going back decades.
Creating an account takes a minute. Access is granted after a brief review.
Always free. No commercial agenda. Built for the caving community.