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Research on riverscapes and stream fish ecology has undergone a wide progress since the 1990s. Several conditions have been pointed out as essential in this progress, including the following four: (a) availability of geo-technology and spatial data, (b) setting the regional context of study areas (biomes, large river basins, ecoregions); (c) defining hierarchical spatial units of analysis (watersheds, segments, reaches) and their attributes (e.g., area, slope, order, perennial/intermittent), and (d) classification of spatial units according to their attributes. Here we present an introduction to these topics, using examples from studies in Brazilian streams, where research progress on riverscapes and stream fish has occurred only more recently. We identify a few challenges in the Brazilian context, including the standardization and consolidation of regional and national spatial databases that support riverscape analyses, training fish ecologists in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial data, expanding the use of classification systems in different spatial coverages and resolutions, research on structural, spatial and temporal attributes of spatial units in riverscape analyses