CaveFinder — LiDAR Cave Entrance Detection
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Tracks
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Friends — for sharing tracks & points
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Offline Maps
Step 1 — Select an Area
Click a button, then draw on the map to select your search area
Already know your area?
Elevation Data Source
Override auto-detection if you know the best source for your area.
Ready. Draw an area to begin.
Want more control?
Run an analysis to see results. When you return, your latest completed analysis reloads here automatically (server must still have it). Use Save in My Saved Results to keep a copy permanently.
After your scan, turn the top picks into an optimized field route + printable packet with Create Field Route
Batch Queue
Queue multiple areas for overnight processing. Draw each area, configure settings, then click "Add to Queue". When ready, start all jobs.
How to Use CaveFinder
1. Draw an area on the map over terrain you want to search (Setup tab). Use the draw box tool, or search by place name / coordinates.
2. Click Find Caves. CaveFinder scans the elevation data for terrain features that look like cave entrances, sinkholes, and karst depressions.
3. Review results in the Results tab. Pins appear on the map and in a ranked list.
• Higher confidence = the terrain strongly resembles a known cave entrance
• Elev on a candidate = the site's ground elevation above sea level, not depth
• Depth = how deep the depression appears in the elevation data
• These are candidates, not confirmed caves — field verification is always needed
• Elev on a candidate = the site's ground elevation above sea level, not depth
• Depth = how deep the depression appears in the elevation data
• These are candidates, not confirmed caves — field verification is always needed
4. Adjust the filters to show more or fewer results.
• Minimum Confidence slider — left = more results (may include false positives), right = fewer, higher-quality results
• Elevation range slider (full mode) — narrow the ground-elevation band shown, e.g. to exclude candidates below or above the terrain you're targeting
• Elevation range slider (full mode) — narrow the ground-elevation band shown, e.g. to exclude candidates below or above the terrain you're targeting
5. Save what you want to keep. Click Save in the Results tab to add the run to My Saved Results (Setup tab, top right) — saved results don't expire like an active session does. Optionally try the 3D Terrain View button in Results for a rotatable LiDAR view of the same area.
6. Create a Field Route to get a terrain-aware walking route between your selected candidates — downloads as a PDF route map + GPX track for your phone or GPS.
7. Use the Field Data tab for everything that isn't a scan result: drop custom pins (Saved Points), record a GPS breadcrumb trail while hiking (Tracks), add a caving contact to share tracks/points with (Friends), and download offline map tiles for no-signal areas.
8. Go to the field! Mark candidates as confirmed, negative, or needs investigation after visiting them.
Tips for Better Results
Higher resolution = more caves found. At 30 m you'll catch
large sinkholes. At 10 m you get most cave-size depressions.
At 1 m you can detect entrances under 1 m wide.
Draw small areas first. Start with a 2-5 km² box over known cave country
to verify the tool finds what you expect before running a large area.
Enable the Karst layer in the Map Controls panel before drawing — if your area
is outside the green overlay, there's little point running analysis there.
Have your own maps? Upload georeferenced cave maps and surveys
as custom overlays — look for Custom Overlays in the Map Controls panel.
Quotas (file size, storage, uploads/day) scale up by tier, but the feature itself
isn't Pro-only.
Outside the US? USGS LiDAR only covers US territory. Elsewhere, CaveFinder
falls back to lower-resolution Copernicus/SRTM/ALOS/NASADEM data — pick a source
under Switch to Pro mode in Setup. Live fetches for uncached international
areas are currently limited to the Free tier due to the data provider's
non-commercial-use terms.
Use field notes. After a field trip, mark each candidate as confirmed,
negative, or needs investigation in the Results tab. This data is saved
and included in GPX/KML exports for the next trip.
Map Controls▼
Base Map
Overlays
Karst
Geology
Macrostrat lithology
Known Caves
BLM
USFS
NPS
Hydrology
Springs & Seeps
Custom Overlays
▼ Legend
Strong Lead
Worth a Look
Uncertain
Long Shot
Known cave (public data)
Known sinkhole
Stream sink