The manuscript entitled 'A hydrological framework for persistent river pools' by Sarah A. Bourke et al., propose a paper that describes a framework for characterizing the hydrology of semi-permanent river pools, as well as some examples of this kind of pools.

Althoug I find interesting the overall idea of the manuscript, it is not adequate for publication in its present form.

The description of the 'framework' (section 2) is rather overconfident, as this is more a revision of former descriptions than an original one. Sections 2, 3 and 4 are is too descriptive, too long and repetitive, the equations are obvious and the figures are of poor quality. Most of this part could be synthesized in the table 1 with approprite references and some auxiliary text like that in section 5.1.

In my opinion, section 5.2 is of value and deserve publication if some aspects are improved. Mostly, the paper should be readable for everybody not used with Australian geologic units, map coordinates and elevation datum. The map in Figure 6 should represent more information than just the location of unknown pools and the figures should be of better quality. The assumptions and interpretations should be better separated from observations.

Section 6 is rather a discussion than a conclusion, but some discussion is necessary not for showing the interest of 'framework' but for identifying research gaps and further research goals, not necesarily using heavy instrumentation.

Many detailed comments are annotated in the manuscript.

This paper contains a lot of information and is in a way a literature review with a proposed methodology for diagnostic and an application to study sites. I believe the contents are appropriate and people interested in the topic will find this a useful guide. Because of its nature, the paper has very little quantitative results, so the authors struggle to find a common synthesis or a final message.

I believe readers will benefit from a more succinct treatment in some of the sections. For example, sections 2 and 3 have lengthy introductory paragraphs that tell the reader what the authors are going to do next…I wonder if that is really necessary or if it is better to just mention what points are going to be touched upon and why. A better connection between sections 2,3 and 4 can be provided, with a bit of a synthesis and perhaps based on Table 1. Table 1 should be moved up the manuscript, within section 2.  

The end of the manuscript is rather abrupt. After going through the application sites the authors go straight to the conclusions, which is most of a summary. There is no discussion of differences or similitudes between sites, lessons learned or future work. I am sure that there are elements of all of this somewhere in the manuscript, but they need to be clearly synthesised at the end. This is, I believe, the main weakness of the manuscript.