# U.S. Mineral Rights Law Atlas, release 2026.10

Published by American Mineral Registry on October 1, 2026. Licensed CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Landing page: https://americanmineralregistry.com/research/mineral-rights-by-state

## What it is

For each of the 50 states and D.C.: the type of rule that governs unused severed mineral interests, the nonuse period where there is one, whether the interest can end without a step by the surface owner, the preservation filing, and whether the state has forced pooling and surface damages statutes. Every field carries its own evidence label and source ids.

## Coverage

- Jurisdictions reviewed in this release: 51 of 51
- Consequential fields checked against official text or searched: 152 of 153

## Review

Researched and checked by American Mineral Registry against the official text wherever it could be read; review completed October 1, 2026. Reference research, not legal advice.

## Files

- law-atlas-2026.10.csv: one row per jurisdiction
- law-atlas-2026.10.json: full records, categories and the source register
- law-atlas-2026.10.xlsx: the same data with README and dictionary sheets
- law-atlas-sources-2026.10.csv: every source with pinpoint, access date and access route
- data-dictionary.csv: every column defined
- CITATION.cff, citation.bib, citation.ris

## Earlier edition

The June 2026 edition (Zenodo version DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20935348, concept DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20935347) is kept unchanged in archive/. It contains errors this release corrects; see https://americanmineralregistry.com/research/changes.

## Limits

General information about statutes, not legal advice or a title opinion. Unresolved jurisdictions have no published rule and are not counted as having none. Statute text and government data keep their own terms.