Natural landscapes have been constantly fragmented in different parts of the world due to human activities that directly and indirectly alter the natural environment gradients (Foley et al., 2005; Chin et al., 2014). The intensity of human activities generates new environmental gradients at different scales that cause a decline in biodiversity and changes in the structure and functioning of ecosystems (Pretty et al., 2010). Considering the watershed and its drainage area, it is possible to observe environmental gradients caused by changes in habitat diversity, nutrient concentrations, organic matter, dissolved oxygen, pH, among other limnological variables (Barrios & Teixeira de Mello, 2022; Lucas et al., 2022; Wanderi et al., 2022). Still, on large scales, environmental gradients can be generated by changes in land use and land cover of the watershed, such as the reduction of riparian vegetation and the increase in the input of sediments to streams and rivers (Tóth et al., 2019; Monteles et al., 2021). More recently, studies have demonstrated the existence of contamination gradients by pollutants such as heavy metals (Loureiro et al., 2021), microplastics (Ríos et al., 2022), and pharmaceutical products (Ghazal, 2023).