Paleofire research is the study of past fire regimes using a suite of proxies (frequency, area burned, severity, intensity, etc.). Charcoal preserved in sedimentary archives constitutes one of the most ubiquitous measures of past fire regimes along with fire-scarred tree rings, chemical markers of fire, and black carbon residue [1,2]. The quantity of charcoal accumulating in sediments over time reflects changes in biomass burned and captures the range of its variability across multiple time scales (e.g., decadal to millennial [3]). The Global Paleofire Working Group Phase 2 (GPWG2; http://pastglobalchanges.org/ini/wg/gpwg2/intro(link is external)) is a team of scientists interested in reconstructing past fire regimes in diverse environments. This paper provides a brief introduction to the evolution of charcoal-based paleofire science as a discipline and presents the outcome of the recent workshop organized by the GPWG2 in Montreal (October 2017), focusing on applications of paleofire knowledge to the management of a range of ecosystem challenges.