Data from: Freshwater ecological quality assessment of the gold mining Mashcon watershed, Cajamarca - Peru

<p>These data were generated to investigate the aquatic community gradients across different types of anthropogenic impacts (reference, mining, rural and urban) and Andean environmental gradients (headwaters, midstream and downstream) in the Mashcon watershed. </p> <p>The macroinvertebrates' taxa abundance and abundance of traits modalities serve as biological values. The latter in combination with abiotic measurements of the freshwater habitats (i.e. physicochemical water quality and hydromorphology) constitute the ecological data.</p> <p>The values were obtained from river sediments (macroinvertebrates collection), water samples for laboratory analyses, field protocols and in-situ water quality measurements at 40 sites, wherein 6 were downstream of the gold mine's artificially recharged headwaters, 8 sites at near-pristine headwaters tributary streams, 14 sites at midstream rural areas and 12 sites at downstream urban areas (sample grouping information is shown in the Field_protocol.xlsx file).</p>